city is so isolated that its people have retained the superstitions and
religious animosities of the Dark Ages. It was therefore with much
compassionate thought of his pitiful case that we sought the
evangelist's house. He was not, however, a man toward whom one could
maintain for a moment that frame of mind. Brisk, cheerful, polished in
manner and with an unsought elegance of dress and carriage, he had not
in the least the air of a despised heretic struggling hopelessly against
social as well as ecclesiastical contempt. Six avowed converts were the
definite results of his work for more than two years. During much of
that time he had been hampered by insuperable difficulties in finding a
place for his service or even a lodging for his family. The latter was
at last provided, as a daring defiance of popular prejudice, by a
landlord who prided himself upon being a _libre penseur_. For his chapel
he secured a disused shop in the front of a bath-house. The proprietress
of the establishment was punished by the priests for her unrighteous
thrift by being refused the sacrament. Her business, too, was for a
while endangered. One instance out of many of the kind of prejudice she
provoked was that of two wealthy and educated ladies, who, as they
entered the bath one day, heard music in the _chapelle évangélique_ and
instantly beat a hurried retreat. They only stopped to explain that all
the world knows the object of Protestant worship is the devil, and they
dare not stay within hearing of the sacrilegious rites. In spite of
multiform discouragements like these, the evangelist and his wife, a
motherly woman of much quiet strength, whose gentleness made sweet a
very homely face, talked of their work and prospects with a
matter-of-course hopefulness which it was not easy to share. Nothing in
their habits, they told us, had more amazed their Roman Catholic
neighbors at first than their lavish use of water. But in that
particular, at least, suspicion had been allayed, their perseverance had
proved the practice harmless, and their example was beginning to find a