“And you have chosen neither sword nor portfolio?” we observed.

“‘The lot is cast into the lap,’” he quoted.  “I was to have been a soldier, but just at that moment my sight failed.  I was threatened with blindness.  Fortunately it passed off with time, and I now see better than I did at twenty.  But my career as a soldier was ended.  I had no taste for politics—­the world is not sufficiently honest.  It seems to me a constant struggling for party and power rather than an earnest union of hearts and minds to do one’s very best for King and country, avienne que pourra.  And as extremes meet in human nature just as they sometimes meet in the physical world, so I, throwing aside the sword, took to the cowl.  Yes; I withdrew from the world; I entered a monastery; the severe order of the Trappists.  But I made a mistake—­I did not know myself.  A life of seclusion, of inactivity, could never be mine.  I should have become demoralised.  Half the men who enter monasteries make the same mistake, but they have not the courage to withdraw.  I went back into the world before my novitiate was six months over.  Not to forsake religion, but to enter the Church.”

“We have heard of you as a great preacher,” we remarked.

“I believe that it is my vocation,” he returned with a smile which quite illumined his face.  “Heaven has bestowed upon me the gift of sympathy; I have influence with my fellow mortals—­Heaven grant that I use it well.  I first touch their hearts, then I have gained their minds.  This is especially necessary with the good Breton folk.  They are fervently religious, but not intellectual.  They are sterling, but narrow-minded and superstitious.  Nor did I choose my sphere of action; it was placed before me and I accepted it.  I would rather have preached to Parisian congregations, the refined and cultivated of the earth; but I should probably not have done more good—­if I have done good at all—­and it might have been a snare to me.  I might have grown worldly; intellectually proud; too fond of the good things of this life at the tables of the rich and great.  All that is not possible in Brittany.  With us, more or less, it is Lent all the year round, intellectually as well as physically.  We need very few indulgences from his Holiness.”

There was something extremely winning about him.  It must have been the charm of character, for he had long passed the charm of youth.  His hair, worn long, was white as snow; he must have been verging upon sixty.  His face was pale and very pure in expression; his eyes were large, dark, and singularly soft and luminous, without a trace of age about them, or of their early weakness.  He was tall and powerfully made, and a tendency to embonpoint only added to his dignity and importance.  He had a fund of quiet humour about him also, which made him an excellent companion.

[Illustration:  OLD MILL, LANDERNEAU.]

“We should much like to hear you preach,” we said.  “Is there no chance of our doing so?”