big-jowled, coarse, animal-looking men, with mottled faces, and skins which do not take kindly to the razor. The arrangements about the neck show a decided scarcity of linen, and a still greater lack of soap and water. They are seldom or never gentlemen, their figures are ungainly, their motions uncouth, and--barring, of course, their scholastic and theological knowledge--I found the majority with whom I conversed stupid, illiterate, and unintelligent. Now, the young priest at Teste was the reverse of all this. With manners as polished as those of any courtly _abbé_ of the courtly old _regime_, there was a perfect atmosphere of frankness and quiet good-humour about my companion, and his conversation was delightfully easy, animated, and graceful. I do not know if my friend belonged to the College of Jesus; but, if he did, he was cut out for the performance of its highest and subtlest diplomacy. We talked of the strange part of the world I was visiting, and I found he knew the people and the country well. I mentioned the submerged chateau and its legend, and he replied that it was an undoubted fact, that both chateaux and villages had been overwhelmed--both by the inbursting of the sea, and by great gales blowing vast hills of sand down into the existing lakes, and so forcing them out of their ancient beds. The sand, indeed, he said, was more dangerous than the water. Often and often the coast-guard stations had to be dug out after a gale; and he believed that, on one occasion, a small church near the mouth of the Gironde had been overwhelmed to such a height that only a few feet of the spire and the weathercock were left apparent. The story put me forcibly in mind of the remarkably heavy fall of snow experienced by my old friend, Baron Munchausen; but, for all that, I see no reason why it should not be literally correct. The pines, the priest informed me, were the saving of the country, by fixing the unstable soil, and the Government had engineers busily engaged in laying out plantations all along the coast--the object being to get the trees down to high-water mark. I mentioned the superstitions of the people. "Alas!" said the priest, "What you have heard is perfectly true. We are improving a little, perhaps. The boys and girls we get to come to school are taught to laugh at the notion of their old grandmothers being witches, and in another generation or two there will be a great change." "And how do your witches work?" I asked. "As ours in England used to do--by spell and charm?"