peasants placed in his charge. Yet with all his kindness he is
melancholy. So many years in one place, such a dull routine of duty,
such a life of abnegation without the honour that sustains and
encourages, such impossibility of being understood and appreciated by
those for whose sake he has been breaking self upon the wheel of
mortification since his youth, have made him old before the time and
fixed that look of lurking sadness in his warmly human eyes.

There are few problems more profound than that of the courage with
which men like him continue their self-imposed penal-servitude until
they become too infirm to work and are sent to die in some refuge for
aged _frères_. They have accepted celibacy and poverty, that they may
the better devote their lives to the instruction of children. They
have no sacerdotal state or ideal, no ecclesiastical nor social
ambition to help them. They must be always humble; they must not even
be learned, for much knowledge in their case would be considered a
dangerous thing. Their minds must not rise above their work. They
guide dirty little fists in the formation of pot-hooks, and when they
have led the boys' intelligence up a few more steps of scholarship the
end is achieved. The boy goes out into the world and refreshes his
mind with new occupation; but the poor Brother remains chained to his
dreary task, which is always the same and is never done.

And what are the wages in return for such a life? Food that many a
workman would consider insufficiently generous for his condition, a
bed to lie upon and clothes which call down upon the wearer the
sarcasms of the town-bred youth. What a land of contrast is France!

There are three Brothers here, but this one, the eldest, is the head.
Others come and go, but he remains. Most of his spare time is given to