longer. I felt that by and by she would begin to talk. At last she had emptied the basket, and then without ceremony she came up to the little table at which I sat. "Bon jour, Madame," she said smiling, "and what does Madame think of Dinant?" I answered that I liked it very much. "Yes," she said, "it is a beautiful town. Mon Dieu! there is not such another anywhere; but it is too gay just now; ma foi! it is spoiled with so many people. There are so many visitors in the hotel, it is hard work to get the serviettes dry by dinner time." She said there had been a grand office in church last Sunday. I asked if this would be repeated next Sunday. She nodded, and gave me a sharp look out of her keen blue eyes. I "Yes, yes, Madame," she said, "but I shall not go. go to la messe often; I like to go, but not as much as I once did. I am of the Liberal party "-here she gave another keen glance to make sure that I understood, —"yes, I am Liberal, and I am just as good a Catholic as some others are," she nodded here with a kind of defiance; "but Monsieur le Doyen does not think so. He despises me, Monsieur le Doyen does; and, Madame, I do not like to be despised. No indeed," she squeezed up her eyes and shrugged her shoulders. "Look you, Madame," she went on gravely, "there are times when I see Monsieur le Doyen looking at me with contempt, and I feel angry; I feel as if I could give him a box on the ear, but then I could not do it, it would not be convenable." She stopped suddenly, perhaps she thought she had been indiscreet, for next moment she shouldered her basket. "Pardon, Madame," she said, "I am wasting your time and my own too; au revoir." She nodded, and went down the path towards the house, collecting her serviettes as she went, for some of them were already dry in the intense sunshine. I inquired and found that the state of religious feeling is the element of discord in this charming little town. There is a Catholic butcher and a Liberal one; and so with all the other trades, and they are at daggersdrawn. The establishment of the Communal College has given dire offence to the clergy, and though they have now been given permission to teach in it, they have refused to do so. They will not take any part in the system unless the whole college is put under ecclesiastical authority. But the Liberals have at present the upper hand in Dinant, and, judging by what one hears, the church partisans seem to have acted with tyranny and want of judgment. CHAPTER IV. THE CHÂTEAU DE WALZIN. ONE afternoon we drove to the valley of the Lesse, in a comfortable carriage belonging to the inn, with our kind guide and one of his friends. About a mile out of Dinant, on the "rivage,” is a quaint old barn, shown in the illustration. The Lesse is another lovely river, which falls into the Meuse at Anseremme. The first part of our way lay beside the Meuse, beneath the wooded falaises, and about a mile beyond Dinant we reached the famous passage between a group of black perpendicular cliffs on the left, and one lofty upright rock on the river bank, called La Roche-à-Bayard. This takes its name from Bayard, the famous magic horse of Les Quatre fils d'Aymon, who has left other tokens of his presence in the neighbourhood of Dinant, besides the footprint said to be visible on this black rock. Formerly, there seems to have been only a small opening at the bottom of the isolated rock, the |