rilliancy of spring." The old man paused, and Edmond said: "Oh! how
willingly I listen to you, and remember all the sentiments and
vicissitudes of my stormy youth."

"What I had before rejected," continued the priest, "now became the
most urgent want of my soul, for I felt, how much a christian
congregation, in unison together, must strengthen and elevate the
individual. I visited the church therefore and wished to join in the
worship of my sect. But whether it was that my mind was too much
agitated, or that I had perhaps fallen on the wrong one, it appeared to
me that every where the church overreached itself by preaching. All
preferred their own explanations, and their close reasoning philosophy
to the word of the Lord, they were all ashamed of Christ and denied him
in artfully spun phrases, they misinterpreted him, merely that they
might bring him nearer to their own weak necessities, as if he and his
disciples must be subservient to their enlightened times, as servants
and sextons of the church. I knew well, that every believing auditor
and layman must be a priest himself to be able by his own power to
transform the worthless into the good, but all my vital energies sank
in the midst of that which surrounded me; the shrill singing stunned
me, and the whole left a void and almost brought me back again to the
state of a despairing infidel. It was certainly unreasonable on my part
to require that all should partake of the intoxication of my newly
planted vineyard. I was now compelled to feel, that fanaticism, and
stepping beyond the limits was yet worse than remaining cold and
apathetic below the mark. I continued my travels, and quarrelled on the
way with my companion, already an old acquaintance, who neither could,
or would not share in all my feelings. Thus we arrived at Nismes; there
my destiny ordained, that I should long remain, in order that my whole
life fully aroused should be determined and resolved. My companion, a
certain Lacoste, introduced me to a house, where new feelings awaited
me, to torture as much as to bless me."

"Lacoste!" exclaimed Edmond, "should he, perhaps--but proceed my
venerable friend, I may be mistaken."

"My former friend," pursued the priest, "was tall and robust, a
handsome man in every sense of the word, feeling and kind, but
frivolous, and as far from every religion, as I had been a short time
previously. This friend introduced me to the family of a worthy
magistrate, which soon,