The Class took many delightful walks along the clean streets and charming boulevards, visiting churches, public buildings, statues, and paintings. In one of the visits to a church Tommy was much amused by a priest who, as the people were going out after some superb music, pretended to be praying, but who, amid the noise and confusion, was only making contortions of his face. Tommy went through the priest's performance in dumb show when he returned to the hotel, for the amusement of Agnes, but was checked by Master Lewis when he attempted a similar imitation in one of the public rooms, lest some one might mistake it for a want of reverence for sacred things. [Illustration: {AT PRAYERS.}] In one of these walks they were shown a place where a French boy did a noble act at the end of the last war. An order had been issued to shoot all persons found with arms in their hands in the streets. A captain with his company on duty came upon a French boy with a musket. "I must order your execution," he said. "Let me return a watch I have borrowed," said the boy. "When will you return?" "At once, upon my word." The boy went away, and the captain never expected to see him again. But he presently came back, and taking a heroic attitude said,-- "_I am ready. Fire!_" He was pardoned. "The young French people," said Master Lewis, "are very patriotic. History abounds with noble acts of French boys. I will relate an incident or two to the point:-- "Joseph Barra lived in the interior of France at the beginning of the French Revolution. He was a generous-hearted boy, who loved truth, his mother, and his country. He was a Republican at heart; a boy of his impulses could have been nothing else. "Wishing to serve his country in the great struggle for liberty, he entered the Republican army at the age of twelve, as a drummer boy. His whole soul entered into the cause; he was ready to endure any hardship and to make any sacrifice, that the country he loved might be free. He allowed himself no luxuries, but he sent the whole of his pay as a musician to his mother. "His regiment was ordered to La Vendée to encounter a body of Royalists. One day he found himself cut off from the troops, and surrounded by a party of Royalists. Twenty bayonets were pointed towards his breast. He stood, calm and unflinching, before the glittering steel. "'Shout,' cried the leader of the Royalists, 'shout, "Long live Louis XVII!" or die!' "The twenty bayonets were pushed forward within an inch of his body. "He bent upon his captors a steady eye, kindling with the lofty purpose of his soul. He took off his hat. He gazed for a moment on the blue sky and the green earth. Then, waving his hand aloft, he exclaimed, '_Vive la République!_' "The twenty bayonets did their cruel work, and the boy died, a martyr to his convictions of right and of liberty.