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CHAPTER III
PÈRE BENEDICT

When Madame Bretton and the children returned from their inspection of the silk-house they were surprised to find Monsieur le Curé, good Father Benedict, awaiting them. The priest was sitting contentedly in the sunshine, his walking-stick in his hand, and the gentle breeze stirring his white hair. Beside him stood Hector with nose on the Curé's knee and great brown eyes looking into the kindly face of the old man.

Madame Bretton hurried forward.

"Why, Father!" she exclaimed. "Who would have thought of finding you here! Have you been waiting long?"

"But a few minutes, my dear," was the answer. "I knew well you could not have strayed far, for the house was unlocked, and the kettle steaming on the hob."

"So it was," laughed Madame Bretton. "You must stay and share our porridge with us, Father. It is just supper time, and you have had a long walk from the village. You must be hungry. The children and I would be so glad if you would be our guest."

Marie and Pierre added their pleas.

"Do stay, Father," they cried. "Stay and tell us some stories."

Monsieur le Curé smiled into their eager faces.

"I will gladly stay if you are sure the porridge——"

"There is enough, Father, and to spare," declared Madame Bretton. "But had I known you were coming you should have had one of the hot tea cakes that you like so much."

"Ah, a tea cake—how good it is! You are a rare cook, my daughter." He glanced into Madame Bretton's face with radiant smile. "But is not hearty welcome better than a pyramid of tea cakes? If you are sure about the porridge——"

He chuckled playfully.

"There is plenty, Father—plenty," put in Marie. "I saw Mother measure it. And if there weren't you should have mine," she added as she joyously seized his baretta and stick and hurried away with them.

"You are a good child, Marie," the old priest called after her. "Now make haste to put my things away, and then you and Pierre shall come here and tell me how your silk-raising is getting on. Have you begun to hatch out your silkworms yet?"

The boy and girl nestled at his side. Had not Father Benedict brought them up; and was he not friend as well as teacher? In every home in Bellerivre his coming was hailed with delight, and his departure followed with regret. He possessed the rare attributes of sympathy and simplicity sometimes blended in great natures. None of his flock experienced a happiness too trivial for him to exult in, or a grief too personal for him to share.

Madame Bretton glanced for a second at the group on the door-step—at the white-haired man, the bright-faced children, the old dog; then she softly tiptoed into the house to make ready the evening meal.

"We haven't hatched any of our silkworms yet, Father," answered Marie, "but everything is prepared, and we shall begin in a day or two; perhaps to-morrow if there is warm sun."

"That is right," nodded the priest. "It is full time they were under way. That is one reason I came to see you. You live so far away that I feared you might not know that all through the valley the silk-raising is beginning. Already some of the peasants in the village have hatched their eggs; but I think they were a bit too hurried about it, for the trees are hardly leaved out enough yet. Sometimes it is as bad to be too early as too late. I hope you are going to have fine luck, my dears, fine luck! And indeed I don't see why you shouldn't."

"We hope so too, Father. It means a great deal to us to succeed, you know," responded Pierre gravely. "You see it is not alone that we need the money for ourselves. It is for Mother as well; and so that we may also send things to Father and Uncle Jacques."

The priest patted the boy's head.

"I know, I know," he answered softly. "Well, be of good courage, my children, and do not be disheartened if you meet with failure at the start. Try a second time, and a third, and many more. The people who first raised silkworms had to try and fail many, many times before they succeeded."

"Who did first raise silkworms, Father?" questioned Marie. "I was wondering about it the other day. Where did we get the first silkworm eggs, and who thought of reeling the silk from the cocoons?"

"That is a pretty big question, Marie," laughed Father Benedict. "Nobody can be exactly sure who originated the industry of sericulture. Certain it was, however, that before other countries had sugar, or china, or silk, the Chinese people were producing all of these things. But they were a selfish nation, and jealous of allowing any one else to share in their progress. Therefore they shut the rest of the world out of their discoveries and kept to themselves the secret of how they obtained the products they manufactured. For China, you must know, was a great walled country where travelers were not very welcome, and whose people mingled little with the inhabitants of other lands. How the Chinese learned to make silk we do not know; but there are in existence old records showing that as far back as the year 2700 B. C., these ingenious people were making fabrics spun from the filament taken from the cocoons of the silkworm. There is an ancient story that the Empress See-ling-shee hatched and raised silkworms in her garden, afterward winding the silken thread from the cocoons and weaving a delicate gauzy tissue from the fibres. Who taught her to do it no one can tell. Some persons think the Chinese stole the art from India; certain it was that the inhabitants of Persia, Tyre, and other eastern countries got silk thread from somewhere at a very early date and used it. In fact it was because the Greeks and Romans called the land beyond the Ganges 'Seres' that later the name sericulture became the term applied to silk-raising."

The priest paused and gently stroked Hector's head.

"There are many ancient references to the use of silk," he went on. "We read how Alexander the Great brought home from Persia wonderful silk fabrics when he and Aristotle went there to collect curiosities. He even tells how the silkworms produced this material which, by the way, he calls bombykia; but nowhere does he tell in what place the industry had its origin. However, he at least knew more about it than did most people, for the common opinion was that the tissue was made from wool, or the fibre of trees, some persons even thinking it came from the bark. Another notion was that silk was woven from thread spun by the spider; still others argued that the cocoanut was its source."

"How stupid of them!" ejaculated Marie.

"Ah, it was not really so strange after all, my dear," replied the priest. "Suppose you were seeing silk for the first time. Where should you think it came from?"

"I don't know."

"Precisely. And that is just the way the rest of the world felt at that time," continued Père Benedict. "Nobody knew, and in consequence everybody made the best guess he could. Until the time of Justinian silk-making was confined wholly to China, being in fact little known anywhere in Europe before the reign of Emperor Augustus. What little silk there was cost so much that no one dreamed of wearing it. At last, however, some of the women of the royal houses of Rome ventured to use it for robes of