KECOLLECTIONS, 1831-37. 135 



"Sacredie ! je n'aurais pas cru." "I would not 



have believed it." Sacredie, on the lips of a Catholic 



priest, is an euphemism for damned, damnation, etc. 

 He looked like a dog that had been flogged. I said 

 no more but young man (I was, perhaps, a few months 

 older than he was), it is time to go to bed. No, he 

 said, we have time enough, and if you do not wish 

 to play any more, let us go in the parlor. We shall 

 talk about plants, of which 1 know absolutely nothing 

 those cryptogamic minute plants you showed once 

 on the trunk of that beach tree, where you quoted that 



verse of Yirgil : ( " O Tityre patulce recubans 



sub tegminefagi" under the shade of that beech tree? 

 only we were standing up, while Yirgil's shepherd was 

 reclining), have interested me much they have in- 

 fused in me the desire to know more. We went in the 

 parlor, but we did not talk long about plants, and the 

 conversation soon crept in that rather hollow science, 

 theology . It was about 7 or 8 P.M. when we went, and 

 when we quitted it was 4 o'clock, A.M. That parlor was 

 a room perhaps twenty or twenty-five feet square, with 

 ceilings fourteen feet high, and only a wood fire of 

 logs, eight or ten or more inches in diameter, that 

 roasted us in front, and we were chilled behind. It 

 was in October or November I am not sure but it 

 was not warm. The heat of our polemics kept us from 

 shivering. It was about 11 6 } clock when our lady sent 



