I left Aix, much the better for my visit, at the end of May, travelling straight to Paris with two {230} ladies--one an extraordinarily voluble Irish widow, in my carriage. The weather was hot; and I tired myself out with an exhaustive and exhausting visit to the Salon and the sculptures in the Champs Elysées. The picture of the year (surrounded always by a silent and interested crowd) was Jean Beraud's "New Way of the Cross,"[3] which, if it made only a percentage of French men and women realize what the public renunciation of Christianity meant, was calculated to do more good than many sermons. A week later I was at Keir, where I found some anxiety caused by the serious illness of Lovat, who was laid up with typhoid, and fretting at being unable, for the first time since the raising of the Lovat Scouts a dozen years before, to take command of the corps at their annual training. We enjoyed some lovely June weather at Keir, motoring one day to Stirling's picturesque lodge on Loch Lubnaig, and lunching _al fresco_ among stonecrops and saxifrages and pansies, on a bank overlooking the loch and the purple mass of Ben Ledi. Another day we saw the smart little soldier-boys of Queen Victoria's School at Dunblane get their prizes from the Duchess of Montrose, with whose husband I had a chat about our Etonian days together, _consule Planco_. I was bidden to Ampleforth for the jubilee celebrations there (their fine college had been opened in 1862), which was graced by the presence of {231} Cardinal Bourne--a stately figure with his long scarlet train sweeping over the green lawns in the great open-air procession which was the central feature of the solemnities. The college O.T.C. formed an uncommonly smart bodyguard to his Eminence, though they puzzled, and even shocked, some of the old Benedictines present by remaining covered (in military fashion) during the service. The after-luncheon oratory was neither more nor less tedious than usual; but we all enjoyed later an admirable presentment by the boys of _The Frogs_ of Aristophanes, with Parry's delightful music. I got back to Fort Augustus in time for the canonical visitation of the monastery by the Abbot-president, to whom I spoke of my hope that I might be allowed to return for a time to Brazil; but he replied to me, in effect, in the words of St. Sixtus to his faithful deacon,[4] and I could only resign myself with what grace I could to the inevitable. I learned on July 2, the thirty-second anniversary of my religious profession, that our prior's resignation of office, owing to his almost continual ill-health, had been accepted, and that I was to be appointed in his place. Meanwhile the Oxford Local Examinations called me (for the last time) to North Staffordshire, where it was pleasantly cool among the hills and wooded glens of Oakamoor. I spent a Sunday at Cheadle, in the valley below, and admired the graceful church which Pugin had been given _carte