prayers almost incessantly, or screaming spasmodically an appeal to charity, and adding to the dreadful din by jingling coppers in tin cups.  In the immediate precincts of the church, where the hurly-burly of piety, traffic, and mendicity reaches its climax, are the vendors of candles for the chapel and of food for the pilgrims, whose diet is chiefly melon and bread.  Creysse, by the Dordogne, produces melons in abundance, which are brought to Roc-Amadour by the cartload, and sold for two or three sous apiece.  And to see these pilgrims devour the fragrant fruit in the month of September makes one think that if Notre Dame de Roc-Amadour were not very pitiful the consequences would be disastrous to many.

There was a humorous beggar on the steps who amused me much, for I watched him more closely than he supposed.  He had something the matter with his legs—­paralyzed, perhaps—­but the upper part of his body was sound enough.  With one hand he shook the tin cup, but the other, which held a short pipe, he kept steadfastly behind his back.  Now and again he turned his face to the wall, as if to drop a tear unseen, but really to take a discreet pull at the pipe.  I think he must have swallowed the smoke.  Then he would face the crowd again, and repeat his doleful cry: 

’De la charite! de la charite!  Chretiens, n’oubliez pas le pauvre estropie!  Le bon Dieu vous benira.’

After all, why should not a beggar smoke?  If tobacco is a blessing, why should a man be debarred from it because his legs are paralyzed, and he is obliged to live on charity?

As one of the first thoughts of every genuine pilgrim to this ancient sanctuary is to get shrived, the chaplains, who, with their Superior, are ten in number, have something to do to listen to the story of sins that is poured into their ears almost in a continuous stream during the eight days of the retreat.  The rush upon the confessionals begins at five in the morning, and goes on with little intermission all day.  The penitents huddle together like sheep in a snowstorm around each confessional, so that the foremost who is telling his sins knows that there is another immediately behind him who, whenever he stops to reflect, would like to give him a nudge m the back.  The peasants, whether it be that they have never cultivated the habit of whispering, or whether their zeal be such as to chase from their minds all considerations of worldly shame and human respect, say what they have to say without regard to the rows of ears behind them, and what takes place at these times is almost on a par with the public confessions of the primitive Church.