But notwithstanding my fervor a distaste for all of these religious things would often take possession of me; sometimes at church especially where the gray light fell upon me and chilled me I felt it most. The awful tediousness of some of the Sunday sermons; the emptiness of the prayers, written in advance and spoken with conventional unctuous voice, and gestures to suit; and the apathy of the people who, dressed out in their best, came to listen,--how early I divined its hollowness,--and how deep was my disappointment, and how cruel the disillusionment--oh! the disheartening formalism of it all! The very appearance of the church disconcerted me: it was a new cityfied one, meant to be pretty without, however, meaning to be too much so; I especially recall certain little efforts at wall decoration which I held in the greatest abomination, and shuddered when I looked at. It was that disgust in little which I experienced in so great a degree when later I attended those Paris churches that strive so for elegance, where one is met at the door by ushers whose shoulders are tricked out with knots of ribbon. . . . Oh! for the congregation of Cevennes! Oh! for the preachers of the wilderness! Such little things as I have mentioned did not shake my faith which seemed as solid as a house built upon a rock; but doubtless they made the first imperceptible crevice through which, drop by drop, oozed the melting ice-cold water. Where I still knew true meditation, and felt the deep sweet peace one should feel in the house of God was in an old church in the village of St. Pierre Oleron; my great grandfather Samuel had, at the time of the persecutions, worshipped and prayed there, and my mother had also attended it during her girlhood days. . . . I also loved those little country churches to which we sometimes went on Sunday in the summer time: they were generally old and had simple whitewashed walls. They were built any where and every where, in a corner of a wheat field with wild flowers growing all about them; or in more retired places, in the centre of some enclosure at the far end of an avenue of old trees. The Catholics have nothing, in my opinion, which surpasses in religious charm these humble little sanctuaries of our Protestant ancestors--not even do their most exquisite stone chapels hidden away in the depth of the Breton woods, that at a later time I learned to admire so much, touch me so deeply. I still held fast to my determination to become a minister; it still seemed to me that that was my duty. I had pledged myself, in my prayers I had given my word to God. How could I therefore break my vow?