some service in which he wished the people of the upper and lower
valleys to unite. Dourmillouse lies on a slope above this difficult
ascent. It is a mere group of rude chalets, like the other villages, but
it has a less miserable air. The land-slides are mostly confined to the
lower valley, and here the scanty Alpine pastures and steep patches of
rye are out of reach of the floods. The people are seldom reduced to
actual want of food, and are esteemed prosperous by their more destitute
neighbors below.

Our first visit was to the old priory in which Neff held his winter
schools. A row of half a dozen trees planted by him in front of the
house now shuts off a good deal of much-needed sunshine, but is
nevertheless carefully cherished as a memorial. Beside the priory stands
the _temple_, once a Roman Catholic church, in which, before the
Revolution, a priest is said to have ministered for twenty-five years
without making a single convert, his own servant constituting his flock.
Presently we went to rest and eat the lunch Pastor Charpiot had brought,
at the house of the local _ancien_, or elder. His wife, a sturdy,
smiling young woman, gave us an eager welcome. Two round-cheeked boys
frisked about their old friend the pastor, and a baby--its spirits quite
unclouded by its austere surroundings--crowed lustily from the cradle in
which, after the fashion of the country, it was tightly strapped. It was
a low, grimy room, with one square bit of a window, and far from clean.
Dr. Gilly, the prim English biographer of Neff, quaintly says:
"Cleanliness is not a virtue which distinguishes any of the people in
these mountains; and, with such a nice sense of moral perception as they
display, and with such strict attention to the duties of religion, it is
astonishing that they have not yet learnt those ablutions in their
persons or habitations which are as necessary to comfort as to health."
I suspect, however, that the nicest "sense of moral perception" in the