‘I should like a wash if there’s such a thing as a cake of soap in the place,’ said the lawyer, ‘but from the appearance of the inhabitants I should rather suspect there wasn’t. Soap would be a mockery for some of them. Nothing less than scraping would be any real benefit.’ They found their sitting-room at the hotel bright with wax candles and a wood fire. Mr. Sampson nearly came to grief upon the beeswaxed floor, and protested against polished floors as a remnant of barbarism. Otherwise he found things more civilized than he had expected, never before having trusted himself across the Channel, and being strictly insular in his conception of foreign manners and customs. ‘I should hope the old gentleman who is to dine with us can speak English,’ he said; ‘he ought at his time of life.’ ‘But if he has lived all his life at Auray?’ ‘Well, no doubt this is a sink of ignorance,’ asserted Sampson. ‘I dare say the stupid old man won’t be able to understand a word I say.’ The two priests were announced as the great clock in the market-place struck six, town time, while the clock on the mantelpiece followed with its shriller chime. ‘Father le Mescam, Father Gedain,’ said the pretty chambermaid in most respectful tones, and thereupon the two gentlemen entered, neatly dressed, clean shaven, smiling, and having nothing of that dark and sinister air which Tom Sampson expected to discover in every Popish priest. Father le Mescam was a little old man, with a quaint, comical face, which would have done admirably for the first gravedigger in ‘Hamlet’; small, twinkling eyes, full of sly humour; a mobile mouth, and a pert little nose, cocked up in the air, as if in good-humoured contempt at the folly of human nature in general. ‘I am extremely obliged to you for the kindness of this visit, Father le Mescam,’ said John Treverton, when the _Vicaire_ had presented him to his superior. ‘My dear sir, when a pleasant-mannered traveller asks me to dinner, I am only too glad to accept the invitation,’ answered the priest heartily. ‘A whiff of air from the outside world gives an agreeable flavour to life in this quiet little corner of the universe.’ ‘Lord have mercy on us, how fast the old chap talks!’ exclaimed Sampson inwardly. ‘Thank goodness, we Englishmen never gabble like that.’ And then, determined not to be left altogether out of the conversation, Mr. Sampson pulled himself together for a bold attempt. He gazed benignantly at Father le Mescam, and shouted at the top of his voice,-- ‘_Fraw, Mossoo, horriblemong fraw_.’ The little priest smiled blandly, but shrugged his shoulders with serio-comic helplessness. ‘_Non moing c’est saisonable temps pour le temp de l’ong_,’ pursued Sampson, waxing bolder, and feeling as if all the French he had acquired in his school days was pouring in upon him like a flood of light. Father le Mescam still looked dubious.