The village is now, after an interval of seven years since the missionary's first visit, adorned with a pretty chapel and school-house and provided with a resident minister. In talking with the people we found abundant proof that their Protestant faith is both intelligent and practical. Such of them as were not busy in the fields surrounded their old pastor with greetings that touchingly expressed their affection and gratitude, and we, as his friends, had a share in the demonstration. One stalwart, clear-eyed old woman obliged us to sit down in front of her chalet, cheerfully explaining that she had just been burned out, and that the shed in which she had found a shelter was not fit for us to enter. She would take no refusal of her offer to fetch us grapes, and ran all the way to and from her vineyard on the opposite hillside, returning in an incredibly short time, scarcely out of breath, and carrying a basket heavy with great white and purple clusters. As she stood watching with delight our appreciation of her produce--the only sweet and luscious grapes, by the way, that we found throughout the autumn in that land of vines--she talked frankly of her religious vicissitudes, summing up as follows: "The priests used to say to me that I had turned Protestant because that is an easier religion than the Roman Catholic. But I have not found it so at all. _Il est beaucoup plus facile de me confesser que de me corriger._" Presently another woman came up the hill, bending painfully under the weight of two water-pails hanging from the ends of a yoke that rested on her shoulders. "Ah," said our hostess, "if they would but let us build the aqueduct, we should not have that ugly work to do." And then we learned that among the small minority of Roman Catholics left in the village, to care for whom, as soon as it was found a wolf had entered the fold, a priest arrived promptly enough, there prevail the wildest superstitions concerning the Protestants. Among many improvements introduced by the latter an aqueduct had been planned to furnish the hamlet with wholesome water. The project was defeated by the opposition of the Roman Catholics, who considered it a scheme for poisoning them _en masse_. It was here that we heard for the first time the epithet Huguenots applied as a term of reproach and derision to the Protestants. Afterward, in regions where Protestants have a history of centuries, we found it commonly used in the same way.