by prayer and holy water; in the Protestant Cévennes a pastor of the Reformed Church has been known to exorcise a field of evil spirits, or tackle by prayers the devils in a poor beast, and even in an entire herd of cattle; and the peasants dread even more than the devil a mysterious god called the _Aversier_.[1] An apologist for these peculiar customs maintains that since Christianity cannot prevent superstition it is wise in directing it,—sending it thus into a right and beneficial channel. This is surely debatable ground. Superstition is by no means the appanage of ignorance only, and we must be grateful when we find it inoffensive and poetical. [1] The maker of rains. In Paris to-day, you will meet educated Frenchwomen who are convinced that St. Anthony of Padua went to heaven and was canonised in the exclusive interest of their lost property. A friend of mine, witty, cultivated, a wide reader and traveller, accompanying me on a walk, dropped one of her gloves just outside the avenue door. She perceived her loss when we had gone a few paces ahead. “Oh, dear good St. Anthony,” she exclaimed fervently, “make me find my glove, and I will light a candle in your honour. And now I am reminded, dear St. Anthony, that I owe you already a candle for my note-book which I lost and found last week; I will pay both on the recovery of my glove.” I listened to the prayer in stupefaction. We turned on our heel, and there at the _porte-cochère_ lay her glove. She pounced upon it, and cried, “Thanks, thanks, good St. Anthony, you will have your two candles this afternoon.” Now, this was not a peasant, a servant, an ignorant little bourgeoise. She was a woman of liberal education, a frequenter of the noble Faubourg, the friend, guide, and philosopher of several authentic counts and countesses and marchionesses and diplomats, a woman who had travelled in Russia, Poland, Germany, and England, and admired all these races; in fact, a charming old lady, a mass of pride and prejudice, yearning to-day for another St. Bartholomew, and yet devoted to several Protestants and to at least one freethinker; who professes an _ancien-régime_ hatred and scorn of the lower classes, and treats her servant, her portress, her _frotteur_, the woman who sells her milk, and the woman who sells her vegetables as her dearest friends, from sheer largeness of heart and generosity of nature. She is not the first person of whom I can truthfully say, “Her virtues are all her own, her vices belong to her religion.”