also in the winter afternoons. At first I had my tea always upstairs
in my own little salon, which I loved with the curtains drawn, a
bright wood-fire burning, and all my books about; but when I found
that she sat alone in the big drawing-room, not able to occupy herself
in any way, I asked her if I might order my tea there, and there were
very few afternoons that I didn't sit with her when I was at home. She
talked often about her early married life--winters in Cannes and in
Paris, where they received a great deal, principally Protestants, and
I fancy she sometimes regretted the interchange of ideas and the
brilliant conversation she had been accustomed to, but she never said
it. She was never tired of hearing about my early days in America--our
family life--the extraordinary liberty of the young people, etc. We
often talked over the religious question, and though we were both
Protestants, we were as far apart almost as if one was a pagan.
Protestantism in France always has seemed to me such a rigid form of
worship, so little calculated to influence young people or draw them
to church. The plain, bare churches with white-washed walls, the long
sermons and extempore prayers, speaking so much of the anger of God
and the terrible punishments awaiting the sinner, the trials and
sorrows that must come to all. I often think of a sermon I heard
preached in one Protestant church, to the boys and girls who were
making their first communion--all little things, the girls in their
white frocks and long white veils, the boys with white waistcoats and
white ribbons on their arms, making such a pretty group as they sat on
the front benches listening hard to all the preacher said. I wondered
that the young, earnest faces didn't suggest something to him besides
the horrors of eternal punishment, the wickedness and temptations of
the world they were going to face, but his only idea seemed to be that
he must warn them of all the snares and temptations that were going to
beset their paths. Mme. A. couldn't understand my ideas when I said I