The child died about an hour after I had left the house.  I sent a black skirt to the woman and was then obliged to go to Paris for two or three days.  When I came back I asked my gardener, who is from this part of the country and knows everybody, if the child’s funeral had been quite right.  He told me it was awful—­there was no service—­the cure would not bury him as he had never been baptized.  The body had been put into a plain wooden box and carried to the cemetery by the father and a friend.

I was very much upset, but, of course, the thing was over and there was nothing to be done.  However, when we talked it over, I understood quite well.  To begin with, all priests are forbidden to read the burial service over any one who has not been baptized, therefore he had no choice.  And this man was not only an unbeliever, but a mocker of all religion.  When his last child was born he had friends over, from some of the neighbouring villages, who were Freemasons (they are a very bad lot in France); they had a great feast and baptized the child in red wine.  I rather regretted the black frock I sent the mother, but she looked so utterly wretched and perhaps she could not help herself.

The little cure is very pleased to have his midnight mass this year on Christmas eve.  Last year it was suppressed.  There was such angry feeling and hostility to the clergy that the authorities were afraid there might be scenes and noisy protestations in the churches; perhaps in some quarters of the big cities, but certainly not in the country where people hold very much to the midnight mass.  It is also one of the services that most people attend.  It is always a pretty sight in the country, particularly if there happens to be snow on the ground.  Every one that can walk comes.  One sees the little bands arriving across the fields and along the canal—­five or six together, with a lantern.  Entire families turn out—­the old grandfathers hobbling along on their sticks, the women carrying their babies, who are generally very good—­quite taken up with the lights and music, or else asleep.  We always sing Adam’s “Noel.”  In almost every church in France, I think, they sing it.  Even in the big Paris churches like the Madeleine and St. Eustache, where they have orchestras and trained choirs, they always sing the “Noel” at some period of the service.

MAREUIL, le 24 Mai.

To-day was the Premiere Communion at La Ferte, and I had promised the Abbe Devigne to go.  I couldn’t have the auto, as Francis was at a meeting of a Syndicat Agricole in quite another direction.  So I took the train (about seven minutes), and I really believe I had the whole train to myself.  No one travels in France, on Sunday, in the middle of the day.  It is quite a long walk from the station to the church (the service was at Notre Dame, the church on the hill), with rather a steep climb at the end.  The little town looked quite deserted—­a few women standing at their doors and in all directions