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And so I passed off from the road that traced the Seine to a road that kept company with the canal. I followed the towpath, even in spite of warnings that ‘t was ‘gainst the law. It was a one-horse canal, for many of the gaily painted boats were drawn only by a single, shaggy-limbed Percheron. The boats were sharp-prowed and narrow; and on some were bareheaded women knitting, and men carving curious things out of blocks of wood, as they journeyed. And I said to myself, if “it is the pace that kills,” these people are making a strong bid for immortality. I hailed the lazily moving craft, waving my hat, and the slow-going tourists called back cheerily.

By and by I came to a great, wide plain that stretched away like a tideless summer sea. The wheat and lentils and pulse were planted in long strips. In one place I thought I could trace the good old American flag (that you never really love unless you are on a foreign shore) made with alternate strips of millet and peas, with a goodly patch of cabbages in the corner for stars. But possibly this was imagination, for I had been thinking that in a week it would be the Fourth of July and I was far from home–in a land where firecrackers are unknown.

Coming to a little rise of ground, I could see, lying calm and quiet amid the world of rich, growing grain, the town of Montargis. Across on the blue hillside was Montargis Castle, framed in a mass of foliage. I stopped to view the scene, and the echo of vesper-bells came pealing gently over the miles, as the nodding poppies at my feet bowed reverently in the breeze.

Villages in France viewed from a distance seem so restful and idyllic. There is no sound of strife, no trace of rivalry, no vain pride; only white houses–the homes of good men and gentle women, and cherub children; and all the church-steeples truly point to God. Yet on closer view–but what of that!

When I reached the town, the church whose spire I had seen from the distance beckoned me first. I turned off from the wide thoroughfare, intending just to get a glance at the outside of the building as I passed. But the great iron gates thrown invitingly open, and a rusty, dusty dog of Flanders lying in the entry waiting for his master, told me that there was service within. So I entered, passing through the noiseless, swinging door, and into the dim twilight of the house of prayer. A score of people were there, and standing in the aisle was a white-robed priest. He was speaking, and his voice came so gently, so sure withal, so exquisitely modulated, that I paused and, leaning against a pillar, listened. I think it was the first time I ever heard a preacher speaking in a large church who did not speak so loud that an echo chased his sentences round and round the vaulted dome and strangled the sense. The tone was conversational and the manner so free from canting conventionality that I moved up closer to get a view of the face.

It was too dark to see well, but I came under the spell of the man’s earnest eloquence. The sacred stillness, the falling night, the odor from incense and banks of flowers piled about the feet of an image of the Holy Virgin–evidently brought by the peasantry, having nothing else to give–made a combination of melting conditions that would have subdued a heart of stone.

The preacher ceased to speak, and as he raised his hands in benediction, I, involuntarily, with the other worshipers, knelt on the stone floor and bowed my head in silent reverie.

Suddenly, I was aroused by a crashing noise at my elbow, and glancing round saw that an old man near me had merely dropped his cane. A heavy cudgel it was that falling on the stone flagging sent a thundering reverberation through the vaulted chambers.