They were the three Brécé ladies, the mother, wife, and daughter of the present Duke. They were all tall, massive, and freckled, with smooth hair tightly plastered back, and clad in black dresses and thick boots. They were on their way to the church of Notre-Dame-des-Belles-Feuilles, situated by the side of a well half-way between the town and the château. The General suggested that they should accompany the ladies. “Nothing could be more delightful,” said M. Lerond. “True,” assented the Abbé, “and all the more so because the sacred edifice, which has lately been restored and richly redecorated by the care of the Duke, is most delightful to see.” The Abbé Guitrel took a special interest in the chapel of Notre-Dame-des-Belles-Feuilles, of which, in archæological and pious vein, he had written a history, for the purpose of attracting pilgrims to the shrine. According to him the church dated from the reign of Clotaire II. “At this period,” wrote the historian, “St. Austrégisile, full of years and good works, and exhausted by his apostolic labours, built with his own hands in this desert spot a hut, where he could pass his days in meditation, and await the approach of blessed death; he also erected an oratory, in which he placed a miraculous statue of the Blessed Virgin.” This assertion had been vigorously contested by M. Mazure in the _Phare_. The keeper of the departmental archives maintained that the worship of Mary came well after the sixth century, and that at the time in which St. Austrégisile was supposed to have lived there were no statues of the Virgin. To which the Abbé Guitrel replied in the _Semaine Religieuse_ that before the birth of Jesus Christ the Druids themselves worshipped the image of the Virgin who was to bear a son, and thus our old earth that was to witness the remarkable spread of the worship of Mary contained her altars and images, prophetic in significance as the warnings of the sibyls, to herald her appearance upon it. Therefore, argued he, there was nothing strange in St. Austrégisile’s possessing an image of the Blessed Virgin as early as the reign of Clotaire II. M. Mazure had treated the arguments of the Abbé as idle fancies, and no one, save M. Bergeret, whose curiosity was unbounded, had read the record of this logomachy.