When I went, as I did now and then, to visit my old friends at the farm, I entertained David with these tales by the hour together, and even Lucille forgot her jealousy to listen. What castles in the air we built on the margins of those great rivers, and what colonies we planted in those unknown lands—colonies where those of the Religion were to find a peaceful refuge, and from which all the evils incident to humanity were to be excluded! They were harmless dreams at the least, and served to amuse us for many a long hour. I have seen some of these colonies since then, and have learned that wherever man goes his three great foes—the world, the flesh, and the devil—go also. Our new neighbors at the hospital of St. Jacques—St. James indeed! I should like to hear what he would have said to them—gave us little trouble for some time. Indeed, they had troubles enough of their own. They were hardly settled in their new abode before a dreadful pestilential fever broke out among them, and several of the nuns died, while others were so reduced that there were not enough of well to tend the sick. The French country people have a great dread of infection, so that nobody would go near them; and I don't know but they would have starved only that my father himself on one or two occasions carried them provisions, wine, and comforts for the sick. There was great talk about the sickness, and those of the Religion did not hesitate to ascribe it to the pestiferous air of the cellars and vaults, which were known to be very extensive, and in which several persons had died after long confinement. "It is the avenging ghost of poor Denise Amblot, who perished there with her infant," said old Marie, our cook. "Not so, my Marie," answered my mother. "Denise has long been in paradise, if indeed she did perish as reported, and is happily in better employments than avenging herself on these poor creatures. Yet it may well be that the bad air of the vaults so long used as prisons may have poisoned those living over them." After the fever came a fire, which broke out mysteriously and consumed all the fuel and provisions which the nuns had laid up for winter; and, to crown all, a sort of reservoir or pond, supposed by some to be artificial, which supplied a stream running through the convent grounds, burst its barriers one night after a heavy storm of rain. The muddy torrent, bearing everything before it—trees, walls, and even the very rocks in its course—swept through the garden and washed away the soil itself, besides filling the church with mud and debris half way up to the roof. Whether the hand of man had anything to do with these disasters I do not know, but it is not impossible. At any rate, the two or three nuns who were left returned to Avranches, from whence they had come, and the place was again abandoned to the owls and other doleful creatures which haunt deserted buildings.