from his ass, with scandalized eyes. Some of the citizens were
laughing around him. "Monsieur the Mayor," said the Bishop,
"and Messieurs Citizens, I perceive that I shock you. You think
it very arrogant in a poor priest to ride an animal which was used
by Jesus Christ. I have done so from necessity, I assure you,
and not from vanity."

In the course of these trips he was kind and indulgent, and talked
rather than preached. He never went far in search of his arguments
and his examples. He quoted to the inhabitants of one district
the example of a neighboring district. In the cantons where they
were harsh to the poor, he said: "Look at the people of Briancon!
They have conferred on the poor, on widows and orphans, the right
to have their meadows mown three days in advance of every one else.
They rebuild their houses for them gratuitously when they are ruined.
Therefore it is a country which is blessed by God. For a whole century,
there has not been a single murderer among them."

In villages which were greedy for profit and harvest, he said:
"Look at the people of Embrun! If, at the harvest season, the father
of a family has his son away on service in the army, and his daughters
at service in the town, and if he is ill and incapacitated, the cure
recommends him to the prayers of the congregation; and on Sunday,
after the mass, all the inhabitants of the village--men, women,
and children--go to the poor man's field and do his harvesting
for him, and carry his straw and his grain to his granary."
To families divided by questions of money and inheritance he said:
"Look at the mountaineers of Devolny, a country so wild that the
nightingale is not heard there once in fifty years. Well, when the
father of a family dies, the boys go off to seek their fortunes,