I left St. Andrews early on a bright autumn morning, my kind old friend, who had insisted on getting up to serve my mass, waving me good-bye under his hospitable porch--a last good-bye it proved to be, for I never saw him again.[6] Before going south I spent a few days at Aberdeen, having some business with our good bishop. I stayed with Malcolm Hay of Seaton (one of my very few Catholic relations) at his pretty old place on Donside. From the windows one looked across the river, and up a wooded brae, to the venerable towers of St. Machar's Cathedral. Malcolm motored me one day to Blairs College; I had not before seen the new buildings and church of our Scottish seminary, quite an imposing pile as viewed from the much-frequented Deeside road. We found the Archbishop of St. Andrews (Mgr. Smith) at tea with the Rector and his professorial staff, who were all most kind and civil. I heard here of the elevation of the eminent advocate, Campbell of Skerrington, to the Scottish Bench--the first Catholic Lord of Session for generations, if not centuries. I was due in Oxford before the opening of the autumn term, in view of my prospective "flitting" from our Benedictine Hall; but I first fulfilled a long {125} overdue engagement to pay a visit to some French friends (the Marquis de Franquetot and his wife) in Picardy. Their pretty château, embowered in big chestnut-trees, was some ten miles from Boulogne, and we drove thither on Sunday to high mass at St. Nicholas-in-the-Market, as my host wanted me to hear the French Bishops' joint pastoral (the first they had been permitted to issue for a great number of years) on Christian education. M. de Franquetot said it had been prepared under the roof of my old friend Lady Sophia Palmer, Comtesse de Franqueville, who, with her excellent husband, had entertained the whole hierarchy for a week at their beautiful hôtel in the Bois de Boulogne. The congregation at St. Nicholas was very large and devout, comprising, as I was pleased to observe,[7] many men of all ranks and ages; and the long pastoral, addressed "aux pères et mères de famille," and interspersed with admirable comments from the good curé, was listened to with close attention, and approval, which the "pères de famille" occasionally showed by thumping the floor with sticks or umbrellas, and muttering--not always _sotto voce_--"Très bien dit,"--"ils ont bien raison," and so on. I was very glad to have been present. Boulogne seemed full of British trippers; and I was amused, as we drove along the sea-front, to see the number of unmistakably French eating-houses which labelled themselves by such enticing titles as the "Royal English Chop {126} House" and the "Margate Bar." Some, more accommodating still, announced in their windows that "Messrs. the Britannic tourists who arrive furnished with their own provisions may eat them here gratuitously." Could the _Entente_ go further? I had