might have had, 'Is it a time to receive money, and to receive garments, and olive yards, and sheep and oxen, and men-servants and maid-servants?' It was a chance, but as I knew that Hedges had applied for an increase of salary, and was looking out for a fresh and pretty house-maid, I thought it probable he would choose the former text. I will let you off this time."
I knew a good deal of what went on in the Hedges establishment, for I was great friends with one Ben Woolfield, a pupil of the chaplain. As Hedges lived in a house on the further side of the Pont d'Oly, on the road to the Val d'Osseau, there was not much chance of Ben learning French there, and as to his acquiring any classics or mathematics from Mr. Hedges, it was most unlikely, as the chaplain was ill-furnished with knowledge. His wife was sorely afflicted with erysipelas over her face, greatly disfiguring her, so that quite harmlessly Mr. Hedges might look out for a pretty domestic servant, just as any man would like to have a rose in his garden as well as a poppy.
There was a small English library attached to the church. From it I drew Laing's translation of the Heimskringla, that wonderful chronicle of the Kings of Norway, compiled by Snorro Sturlason, who died in 1241. It is one of the most delightful and engrossing of histories, and that book gave to me an ineradicable craving to know Icelandic and to travel to Scandinavia.
It was probably due to the fact that through travelling and living abroad so much, I had few English books to read, but such as I did read laid a great hold upon me and influenced my after life.
Since the time when we were at Pau there have been two more English churches erected there, one a large structure frequented by the families of the jockeys from England; the other, S. Andrew's, sets up to be "High Church." For some years it was a corrugated iron erection, and the French called it "Le Temple d'Enfer." It is now of stone. The winter we were at Pau, Mrs. Trollope, the authoress, was there as well, a good-humoured, clever, somewhat vulgar old lady. She took much notice of me. The English residents were not a little shy of her, fearing lest she should take stock of them and use them up in one of her novels; for she had the character of delineating members of her acquaintance, and that not to their
