e Devil's causing, which could perchance be dispelled.

These impure teachings made no way with Cadiere. They were sure to
anger her brethren, to whom they were not unknown. The letters they
wrote in her name are very curious. Enraged at heart and sorely
wounded, accounting Girard a villain, but obliged to make their sister
speak of him with respectful tenderness, they still, by snatches, let
their wrath become visible.

As for Girard's letters, they are pieces of laboured writing,
manifestly meant for the trial which might take place. Let us talk of
the only one which he did not get into his hands to tamper with. It is
dated the 22nd July. It is at once sour and sweet, agreeable,
trifling, the letter of a careless man. The meaning of it is thus:--

"The bishop reached Toulon this morning, and will go to see
Cadiere.... They will settle together what to do and say. If the Grand
Vicar and Father Sabatier wish to see her, and ask to see her wounds,
she will tell them that she has been forbidden to do or say aught.

"I am hungering to see you again, to see the whole of you. You know
that I only demand _my right_. It is so long since I have seen more
than half of you (he means to say, at the parlour grating). Shall I
tire you? Well, do you not also tire me?" And so on.

A strange letter in every way. He distrusts alike the bishop and the
Jesuit, his own colleague, old Sabatier. It is at bottom the letter of
a restless culprit. He knows that in her hands she holds his letters,
his papers, the means, in short, of ruining him. The two young men
write back in their sister's name a spirited answer--the only one that
has a truthful sound. They answer him line for line, without insult,
but with a roughness often ironical, and betraying the wrath pent-up
within them. The sister promises to obey him, to say nothing either to
the bishop or the Jesuit. She congratulates him on having "boldness
enough to exhort others to suffer." She takes up and returns him his
shocking gallantry, but in a shocking way; and here we trace a man's
hand, the hand of those two giddy heads.

Two days after, they went and told her to decide on leaving the
convent forthwith. Girard was dismayed. He thought his papers would
disappear with her. The greatness of his terror took away his senses.
He had the weakness to go and weep at the Ollioules parlour, to fall
on his knees before her, and ask her if she had the heart to leave
him. Touched by his words,