Outside of the church the eagerness and veneration are no less. The places frequented by the defunct are pointed out, and into the old presbytery they hurry and almost smother each other on the stairs. One has to pause on his way a quarter of an hour sometimes before reaching the bedroom of the Curé d'Ars. The chamber has been barricaded, and provided with an opening in the wall, that it may escape the general devastation. The door is armed with a strong grating and plated with iron. Without such precaution all would have been long since broken open, demolished, and carried away. As it is, there is more than one hole in the wood-work, and even the walls are broken in, in places. It is said that workmen armed with crow-bars have attempted to throw down the wall. The shrubs and herbaceous plants in the court-yard are spoiled incessantly; as if the visitors, unable to molest the walls, revenge themselves on the flowers and verdure. But they cannot penetrate into the chamber and are forced to stay behind the barricade. They succeed each other, as on some grand occasion of public curiosity in Paris, when the crowd is unusually large. From the kind of vestibule which forms the opening in the wall the visitor can take in the whole apartment, if not entirely at his ease, on account of the pressure of the crowd, at least without losing any detail. Everything remains as it did during the life of the Curé d'Ars. Here is the bed, sheltered under its green tapestry, a present from the Comte de Carets, in place of another bed which was burned under extraordinary circumstances. {211} Here is the wooden chimney where the priest came each day--after spending from sixteen to eighteen hours in the confessional--to revive his exhausted body by the still living flame of a simple branch. The table is always set, as if it awaited its old companion. An earthen porringer, with a pewter spoon, a little pitcher, also of earth, which held the milk, an earthen plate, and a coarse linen napkin; and nothing more. This modest service, and the necessarily modest repast it supposes, had sustained, for nearly forty years, the most valiant and fruitful life of the age. Man lives not by bread alone; this man lived almost without it; a little milk sufficed him, and on this he existed nearly all his life--a trait not less astonishing than the power and energy with which this milk seemed to inspire him. Two oaken chests, presented also by pious persons, some sacred engravings, enough books to fill the simple shelves, two or three straw chairs, complete the furniture of this poor chamber, as popular today as the apartments of the Louvre or the Museum of Sovereigns. A niche in the wall, covered with a glazed partition, preserves and exposes to the piety of the pilgrims the cassock and cap of the poor priest.