In the moorland districts, also, and in the little villages which border the great forests, the _curés_ are everything, and do everything. They perform the part of judge, doctor and apothecary, banker and architect, carpenter and schoolmaster; they give the designs for the cottages, mark the boundaries of estates, receive and put out the savings of their flocks, marry, baptize, and bury, offer consolation to the afflicted, encourage the unfortunate, purchase the crops, and sell a neighbour's vineyard. They represent the sun, by the influence of whose rays everything germinates and lives; it is their hand--the hand of justice--that arrests and heals all quarrels; the unselfish source from whence good counsels flow--the moral charter from which the peasant reads and learns the duties of a citizen. Ask not the population of our plains and forests, and secluded agricultural districts, to which political party they belong; if they are republicans, royalists, socialists or communists, reds or blues, whites or tricolor,--they know nothing of all this. Their opinions--their religion--are those of _Monsieur le Curé_. They know his prudence, his charity, his good sense; they know he loves them like a father; that he would not leave them for a bishopric--no, not for a cardinal's scarlet hat;--that as he has lived, so will he die with them: that is enough for them. Thus they consult him when they wish to form an opinion for themselves, much in the same way as a sportsman, anxious to take the field, looks up at the chanticleer on some village-steeple to know what he ought to think of the cloudy sky above; and when they see the good man sauntering past their cottages, with head erect and animated step, smiling, and evidently full of cheerful, charitable thoughts, and on good deeds intent, kissing the little children, giving a rosy apple to one, and a playful tap to another; offering a sly word of hope to the young girls, and a few kind ones to the aged and infirm,--all the village is elated; and the old maids fail not to present him with a fat fowl, or some such substantial expression of their respect. But if, alas! the good _curé_ should appear walking with a slow and solemn step, his hands behind his back, his eyes fixed upon the ground, and an anxious and thoughtful look upon his brow, his flock gaze at one another, and whisper in an under tone that something is amiss.