“That’s pretty plain talk,” was my comment—“a good deal plainer than they give it to us down at our meeting-house. It sets a fellow to thinking, too.” And here I was about to make a damaging admission, when I fortunately recollected that I was in line of battle, with my enemy in front. So I charged again with: “Oh! it’s easy enough to write or preach the most pious precepts, and, at the same time, not be at all remarkable for their practice. If your Sales man was such a fine gentleman as you describe, I strongly suspect that that very fact kept him pretty closely tied to the world, and that he may have been, after all, a mere ornamental guide-post to point out to others the road he had no idea of travelling himself.” “George, you are incorrigible, and I doubt that you really believe the half of what you are saying. But I shall not ask you to accept my opinion of S. Francis of Sales’ personal piety. Here is a Protestant estimate of it: ‘There is a beauty, a symmetry, an exquisite grace of holiness, in all that concerns the venerable Bishop of Geneva which fascinates the imagination and fills the heart. Beauty, harmony, refinement, simplicity, utter unself-consciousness, love of God and man, welling up and bursting forth as a clear fountain that never can be stayed or staunched—such are the images and thoughts that fill the mind as we dwell upon his memory.’ “It was in 1592,” continued my cousin, “that Francis of Sales returned to the paternal mansion, after having been for twelve years a scholar at the universities, and a student of the great world. His father had ambitious projects for the advancement of his only son. By agreement of the parents on both sides, he was to marry a rich heiress, the daughter of the Seigneur de Vegy; and the reigning Duke of Savoy tendered him the high position of senator; yet, notwithstanding the most energetic remonstrances and prayers of his father and many friends, he calmly but resolutely declined both the marriage and the senatorial dignity, and in 1593 was received in minor orders by the Bishop of Geneva, and ordained priest in December of the same year.” “After which,” I interposed, “he, of course, had an easy time of it.”