"You mean that I shall marry? Well, to be sure"--with a recurrence to that business-like tone which had always amused him formerly in her discussion of her affairs of the heart--"I ought to have a better chance now than ever, as I shall have a larger fortune; but"--with a lapse into depression--"this is not a good place for men--I mean Englishmen. There are troops of delightful-looking Frenchmen, Chasseurs d'Afrique, and Zouaves; but, then, we do not know any of them--not one. Well, perhaps"--philosophically--"it is for the best; one always hears that Frenchmen make very bad husbands." CHAPTER III. Notre Dame d'Afrique--Lady of Africa--is an ugly lady, homely and black; and the church that is dedicated to her is ugly too--new and mock-Moorish; but, like many another ugly lady, being very nobly placed, she has a great and solemn air. It is Our Lady of Africa who first gives us our greeting as we steam in from seawards; it is to Our Lady of Africa that the fisher-people climb to vespers, and to the touching office that follows, when priests and acolytes pass out of the church to the little plateau outside, where, sheer against the sky, stands a small Latin cross, with a plain and, as it seems, coffin-shaped stone beneath it, on which one reads the inscription: "À la mémoire de tous ceux, qui ont péri dans la mer, et ont été ensevelis dans ses flots." "_All those who have perished in the sea, and been buried in her waves._" What a gigantic company to be covered with one little epitaph! Notre Dame d'Afrique stands grandly on the cliff-tops, overlooking the sea, whose cruel deeds she is so agonizedly prayed to avert, whose cruelty she is sometimes powerful to assuage, witness the frequent votive tablets with which the church walls are covered: "Merci, oh ma mère." "J'ai prie, et j'ai été exaucé." "Reconnaissance à Marie." "Reconnaissance à Notre Dame d'Afrique." She does not look very lovable, this coal-black Marie, who stands in her stiff brocade, with her ebon hands stretched straight out above the high-altar; but how tenderly these poor fisherwives must have felt towards her when she brought them back their Pierre or their Jean, from the truculent deeps of the ocean!