My arrival here was--I may say it without vanity, for I was a stranger to him--quite an event in the poor missionary’s lonely life; and the landing--for it did not deserve the name of room--left vacant by the departure of Father Arnoux, was placed at my disposal. I ask pardon of the good, brave, and generous priests who have aided, welcomed, and sheltered me through all my wanderings, if I have spoken too plainly of their poverty and privations of all kinds; if I have raised the curtain which, perhaps, they would wish to keep drawn, for, I repeat, they look not for recompense in this world; but I have done it that the world may know that their life is one of the hardest and most painful, and requires self-sacrifice more than any other. Exposed to the influence of pernicious climates, badly lodged, badly fed, far from their families and from their country, often ill and dying without help--such is the lot of these men. The house of uncle Apait was at least as elegant and well furnished as that of the humble priest at Brelum: both had the bare ground for a floor, walls of bamboo canes, and dried grass for thatch. The hut was divided into four compartments, two being used by the missionaries, another by their servant, and the fourth served as a chapel. This, like the others, was far from splendid, and the whole house had been so undermined by the white ants, that it seemed menaced with approaching ruin. [Illustration: Drawn by M. H. Rousseau, from a Photograph. AMAZON OF THE KING’S FEMALE GUARDS.] THE ANNAMITES. Speaking of the Annamite servants, I shall quote what the Abbé Gagelin says about them, for I can testify to its truth. “All sensibility,” says he, “appears deadened among them; they are very proud, however, and great cheats. There is so little affection among them, that the nearest relations never think of embracing; even a child, returning to his parents after a ten years’ absence, would not think of such a thing. Among brothers and sisters it would be considered almost a scandal. They will not permit us missionaries to caress a child, not even a baby. This coldness is not confined to their domestic relations; under an ardent sky, which should warm the imagination, they, in their stupid _sang froid_, will not tolerate in a preacher the slightest movement or gesture.” However, to compensate for these defects, the abbé, who, even in the opinion of several of the other missionaries, has been guilty of great errors in his letters, might have added that, at times, they are capable of acts of devotion and self-sacrifice truly great and courageous.