"_Mon ami_, it was not I, but Joan herself, to whom all honor belongs.
There was a moment--Captain Capriata had taken absinthe with his
morning _popoi_, and was unsteady. He stumbled. I called to him to
breathe a prayer to his patron saint--he is of Ajaccio in
Corsica--and to call upon Joan for aid. He straightened up at once,
after one fall, and bore the white banner of the Maid in good style
from the mission to the deserted inn by the leper-house.

"We had three superb feasts, one on each day of the fête. We had
speeches and songs, three masses a day to accommodate all, four
first communicants, and two marriages. I will tell you, though it
may be denied by the commercial missionaries, that five protestants
attended and recanted."

Père Simeon's eyes flashed as he recalled those memorable days. He
fell into a reverie, scratching his legs after the _nonos_ and
letting his cigarette go out.

I arose to depart. He must go to Huapu with the chief, who was again
at the door,

"And did the fête help the parish?" I asked with that bromidic zeal
to please that so often discloses the fly just when the ointment's
smell is sweetest.

"Alas!" he replied, with a sorrowful shake of his beard. "Even the
girl who had worn the white armor leaped from the mast of a ship to
escape infamy and was drowned. Yet there was grandeur of sacrifice in
that. But for the others, they die fast, too. Some day the priest