Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/87

Rh good and kind they were. And much excellent and earnest conversation had we together under the shadow of our cottage roof, or during our walks in the valley. I was much interested also, in becoming better acquainted with Père Ansermey, who is a splendid example of the Christian peasant. He was now confined at home, in consequence of an injury received, a couple of months since, during the repair of his house, when he fell from the roof. He had, therefore, given up to his wife and son the care of the cattle in the higher pasturages of the mountains, whilst he remained down in the valley with his daughter—a good, managing, and pretty girl, our hostess,—to look after the place and a cow which had broken its leg. Père Ansermey waited till his cow was better, in order to go with her up into the mountains. He is a tall and powerful man, between fifty and sixty, with a splendid countenance and the most beautiful and expressive eyes I ever saw in a man.

During a short time that I was left alone with him, he asked me, in a half-dubious way, but with a gentle and most heartfelt voice, “whether I loved Jesus?” and when I replied, “Yes,” how his countenance beamed, how his eyes brightened! After this he related to me the history of his own conversion, which was that of a silent, inward struggle between an outer, not particularly edifying life, and an ideal of perfection, which became ever stronger and stronger in his soul. This inward combat attained to its height, when one evening at a dancing party, a bloody quarrel having arisen, Père Ansermey felt