This morning I told Colonel Hine that I wanted a day in town to get some necessaries for my church work, and permission was readily granted. I inquired the way to the nearest church, timing my visit to get in around the dinner hour, so as to get an invitation for a meal. As I rang the bell of the rectory, the door opened and a poor woman with two children came out carrying a basket into which the housekeeper had put food. I said to myself: Where charity exists, hospitality ought to flourish. I waited in the customary bare ecclesiastical parlor for the Curé, and at last he came, a stout middle-aged man, walking with a limp. I presented myself, very tall and quite imposing in my long army overcoat, and told him I came in search of altar breads. He immediately proposed to take me to a convent some distance away where my wishes might be satisfied. As I followed him along the cobbled streets I said to myself, “I had thought these Bretons were a kind of Irish, but they lack the noblest of the traditions of the Celtic race, or this old gentleman would have asked me to dinner.” It was only later that I found that my tremendous presence had embarrassed him and he had therefore decided to bring me to somebody whom nothing would embarrass. One need not say that this was a woman—the Mother Superior of an institution which was school, orphanage and _pension_ in one. She was of a type not unusual in heads of religious communities—cultivated, balanced, perfectly serene. After supplying my needs she asked gently, “Monsieur has dined?” “No, Monsieur has not dined.” “Perhaps Monsieur would accept the humble hospitality of the convent.” “Monsieur is a soldier, and soldiers have but one obligation—never to refuse a meal when they can get it.” She smiled and brought me to the dining room, where I met the old chaplain and two equally elderly professors from some college, who pumped me about America and myself and Wilson and myself and Roosevelt and myself until the meal was over. Then I sallied forth with my stout Curé who evidently had absorbed, as he sat silent through the meal, all the information I had been giving out, particularly about myself. For he brought me into forty stores and stopped on the street at least a hundred people (and he knew everybody in town) to introduce proudly his prize specimen of an American priest in uniform. The introduction invariably took this form: “Monsieur is an American.” “He is an officer.” “Monsieur, though one would not know it, is a priest. He has a large parish in the City of New York. He has been a Professor in the Seminary—of Philosophy, mind you. Monsieur has a parish with three vicaires. He receives from the noble government of the United States a stipend of ten thousand francs a year. That is what this great country gives their Chaplains. He is a Chaplain. He has crosses on his collar. Also on his shoulders. If I were taller I could see them. I saw them when he was sitting down.”