Ask him for indulgences, absolution, masses and prayers for the living and the dead; he will grant them all. Ask him for his niece in marriage; ask him to marry you, to baptize you, to bury you; he will do it all--yes, all for nothing! It is not in his nature to refuse anything. Ask him for his new cassock, his cane, or his hat, his black silk stockings, or his silver buckles, and they are yours. No one so ready to forgive an insult or forget an injury as he. But, by the blood of the Mirabels, give him not a bottle of bad or sour wine, for he will neither forget nor forgive it; and above all things, never give him a hint that it would be well if he gave up his favourite fluid, for be assured, you would forfeit his friendship for ever. Sooner would he consent to lose a leg or all his teeth, than give up his life-loved Burgundy! Tell him he will have an attack of apoplexy; tell him that he will be taken off suddenly by inflammation, and that water therefore should be his beverage; he will reply with a smack of his lips, and a castanet noise with his fingers. "Nonsense, my boy--stuff and rubbish! Pass the wine, my son; pass it again. Pass the ham, gentlemen. Fill a bumper. Hurrah for old Burgundy! hurrah for her wines! Confound the pale fluid, and a fig for the gout!" Such are the ebullitions of his heart in his jovial moments; and the following lines, which would spoil in the translation, give a lively picture of them: "Pour trop bien boire un curé de Bourgogne De son pauvre oeil se trouvait déferré, Un docteur vint:--Voici de la besogne Dit-il, pour plus d'un jour;--Je patienterai! Ça vous boirez:--Eh bien! soit, je boirai! Quatre grands mois:--Plutôt douze, mon maître. Cette tisane!--A moi? hurla le prêtre, _Vade retro!_ Guérir par le poison! Non, par ma soif! perdons une fénètre, Puisqu'il le faut, mais--_Sauvons la Maison_." CHAPTER III. Geology--Fossil shells--Antediluvian salmon--The Druids--Chindonax, the High Priest--Roman antiquities--Julius Cæsar's hunting-box--Lugubrious village--Carré-les-Tombes--The Inquisitive Andalusian.