By pulling down a wall, I have placed myself in communication with the Infirmerie de Marie Thérèse; I find myself at the same time in a monastery, a farm, an orchard and a park. In the morning, I wake to the sound of the _Angelus_; I hear from my bed the singing of the priests in the chapel; I see from my window a Calvary which stands between a walnut-tree and an elder-tree: cows, chickens, pigeons and bees; sisters of Charity in black taminy gowns and white dimity caps, convalescent women, old ecclesiastics go roaming among the lilacs, azaleas, calycanthuses and rhododendrons of the flower-garden, among the rose-trees, gooseberry-bushes, strawberry-plants and vegetables of the kitchen-garden. Some of my octogenarian vicars were exiled with me: after mingling my poverty with theirs on the lawns of Kensington, I have offered the grass-plots of my hospice to their failing foot-steps; they there drag their pious old age like the folds of the veil of the sanctuary. I have as a companion a fat red-gray cat with black cross stripes, born at the Vatican in the Raphael Gallery: Leo XII. brought it up in a skirt of his robe, where I used to watch it with envy, when the Pontiff gave me my audiences as Ambassador. On the death of the successor of St. Peter, I inherited the cat without a master, as I have told in writing of my Roman Embassy. They called it Micetto, surnamed the Pope's Cat. In this capacity it enjoys an extreme consideration among pious souls. I strive to make it forget exile, the Sistine Chapel and the sun of Michael Angelo's dome, on which it used to take its walks far removed from earth. My house and the different buildings of the Infirmary, with their chapel and the Gothic sacristy, present the appearance of a colony or hamlet. On ceremonial days, religion hiding under my roof, the Old Monarchy in my alms-house form up in marching order. Processions composed of all our valetudinarians, preceded by the young girls of the neighbourhood, pass under the trees, singing, with the Blessed Sacrament, the cross and the banner. Madame de Chateaubriand follows them, beads in hand, proud of the flock which is the object of her solicitude. The blackbirds whistle, the red-breasts warble, the nightingales compete against the hymns. I am carried back to the Rogations, of which I have described the rustic pomp[501]; from the theory of Christianity, I have passed to its practice.