‘You know already, but you will be glad to hear me repeat, that the English and Norwegian missionaries, in spite of the attacks of which they are the objects, rival each other in zeal in order to make France benefit by the moral and spiritual work which they have accomplished in this country. I have come into close enough contact with them to be able to affirm that they have accepted loyally and without any reservation the actual condition of affairs, that they work for the pacification of minds, and that they solicit only one favour--to be able to continue their work in peace, not with a political end in view, which they have never followed, but with the aim of converting the Malagasy people. They have spontaneously offered the French government their most devoted co-operation, and with their thousands of converts they represent a force morally incomparable. I do not hesitate to say, that to refuse this concurrence would be an enormous mistake from the political point of view, indeed almost a crime. For the honour of our country, as also for the good of our great African colony, we must believe that France will never make herself guilty of it. ‘October 17. We are certainly passing through a solemn period in the history of Evangelical Christianity in Madagascar. The country is indeed being tried by fire and furnace. The threats of the Jesuits, who are supported everywhere by the officers, the chiefs of departments, and the commanders, their acts of oppression, their violence even, constitute a persecution in rule, comparable to that of the seventeenth century. I do not exaggerate when I say that in Madagascar we have gone back two centuries in the principles of liberty of conscience. ‘Here is an example. One of the London Missionary Society missionaries having warned me that grave matters were happening in his district, I resolved to accompany him in order to restore things to order. It was a question of a Jesuit father, who had profited by the good disposition of the captain of Tsìafàhy, where there is not a single Catholic, in order to win over the inhabitants of the village. The day before he had summoned, by the help of the native governor, a great _kabàry_ and at this _kabàry_ in which, a grave action indeed, the captain assisted, he announced that henceforth he would come to say mass every Sunday, that the adults were free to do what appeared good to them, but that in all cases the children must from the ensuing Monday enter the French school (by which is meant the Catholic one) which was going to be established in their village. Now notice, that there has been for many years a native school of the London Missionary Society which has never ceased working.