In the nursery of a fine old Swiss castle, on the shores of Lake Leman, stood a small boy of seven, confronted by his white-capped nurse.

“You are a naughty boy!” she exclaimed “Do you not know that the devil is to take away all naughty children?”

The little fellow opened wide his clear, truthful eyes, into which there crept a deepening look of trouble—­trouble rather than fear; big tears rolled down his pinafore, and when tucked away for the night, Jean Guillaume De La FlÉchÈre crept out of his cosy cot, sank upon his knees, and began the first real prayer of his life: “O God, forgive me!” Nor would he be interrupted until the inward sense of pardon comforted his sorrowing little heart Many years later he described this time as the shedding abroad of the love of God within him.

Colonel De La FlÉchÈre’s family mansion commanded as fine a view of Swiss scenery as could be found in the neighbourhood “Hill and dale, vineyards and pastures, stretched right away to the distant Jura mountains At a few paces from the chÂteau was a terrace overlooking Lake Leman, with its clear blue waters and its gracefully curved and richly-wooded bays On the right hand, at a distance of fifteen miles, was Geneva, the cradle of the Reformation in Switzerland; on the left, Lausanne and the celebrated Castle of Chillon High up in the heavens were Alpine peaks, embosoming scenes the most beautiful; and not far away was Mont Blanc, ‘robed in perpetual and unsullied snow.’” (Tyerman.)

In this earthly paradise the little Jean received his first unconscious training, breathing not only the clear mountain air into his lungs, but a no less important atmosphere of refinement, of culture, and of nobility into his mental and moral being.

He was devoted to his mother, who could never say he wilfully disobeyed her One day, however, she deemed him lacking in reverence for her, because, when rebuking a member of the family over-sharply, John turned upon her a long look of evident reproof She promptly boxed his ears, but was more than mollified when the boy lifted his clear eyes to hers, brimful of tenderness, and said simply, “Mother, when I am smitten on one cheek, and especially by a hand I love so well, I am taught to turn the other also.”

It was not priggishness, but submissive affection, and she read it aright.

CHAPTER II.