youthful antagonist.[18] It is a curious contrast, the wrinkled old
woman of Caen and the English lad--the one full of the realities and
cares of life; born in revolutionary days, and remembering in her
childhood Charlotte Corday going down this very street on her terrible
mission to Paris; her daughters married, her only son killed in war, her
life now (it never was much else) an uneventful round of market days,
eating and sleeping, knitting and prayers; the other--young, careless,
fresh to the world, his head stored with heathen mythology, the loves of
the Gods, and problems of Euclid--taking a light for his pipe from the
old woman, and airing his French in a discussion upon a variety of
topics, from the price of apples to the cost of a dispensation; the
conversation merging finally into a regular religious discussion, in
which the disputants were more abroad than ever,--a religion outwardly
represented, in the one case by so many chapels, in the other by so many
beads.

It is a '_fête_' to day (according to a notice pasted upon a stone
pillar) '_avec Indulgence plénière_,'

GRAND MESSE à 10 a.m.,
LES VÊPRES à 3 p.m.,
SALUT ET BENEDICTION DU SACRAMENT,
SERMON, &c.'

Let us now follow the crowd (up the street we saw in the illustration)
into the Church of St. Pierre, which is already overflowing with people
coming and going, pushing past each other through the baize door,
dropping sous into the '_tronc pour les pauvres_,' and receiving, with
bowed head and crossed breast, the holy water, administered with a
brush.