But what I liked better than "Robinson," better than "Celina," better than my garden, better than the eternal walks around Colas' field, was the church service on religious holidays, the "pompous grandeur of its ceremonies." Yes, the "pompous grandeur,"--I will not retract. Since then I have seen St. Peter's, the cathedrals of Cologne and Toledo, and, I believe, all the finest churches in the world; yet I never attended service anywhere without recalling the poor little church of St. Jean Brévelay. The difference between the palace of a king and the thatched cottage of a peasant is far greater than that between the august basilica and the poor little tottering chapel of a Breton village. May the artists forgive me, but a church, however poor and small, is none the less a church. Four bare walls, a wooden cross upon a table, windows so covered with dust that they scarcely let the light in,--all these things speak to the soul of meditation and of prayer. I do not know what the population of St. Jean Brévelay was. It could not have been over two hundred; but on Sunday the people came to High Mass from the four corners of the parish, which was vast and populous. The farmhouses and thatched cottages all emptied themselves at the first glow of dawn. You could see the families making their way to the borough along every known road--the men leading the way in silence, the women following in noisy talk among themselves. They at first scattered through the graveyard, every family stopping to say a prayer at the family tomb. Then the friends and relatives came together in groups, and the men made more than one escape to the tavern. At the last call for High Mass they all rushed to the church doors, pushing, jostling, crowding one another, until the building was filled from end to end. The graveyard--I might say the borough--was now a perfect desert. The men, standing, and pressed close together, occupied all the front part of the nave; the women, kneeling, filled the rear. All, without exception, took part in the singing. The common serpent was unknown to us; but with our voices alone we managed to make a formidable noise. The people were happy to be there, not because, as Voltaire says, "High Mass is the opera of the poor," but because, as the Christian Church says, religion is the consolation of the afflicted. The rector delivered his sermons in Low Breton, and they were never anything but a paraphrase of this word of the Gospel, Love one another. And surely they loved one another, those uncultured folk. They did not know how to read, but they knew how to love. They understood gratitude too. My mother was almost an object of worship. The great festival of the year, after that of Saint Louis, was Christmas. The King first and God next, such is the order of precedence under all governments. It is possible that our poor peasants would have reversed that order had they been able to do so.