my
poor friend, you make me doubt your reason. Can there be anything
reasonable in the turpitude of heresy?

Then he hurried to find the Bishop:

--I have emptied our young man's bag, he said to him. Do you know,
Monseigneur, what there was at the bottom?

--Oh, oh. Has he been inclined to debauchery? He is so young.

--Would to heaven it were only that, Monseigneur. But it is a hundred times
worse.

--What do you tell me? Must I fear then for all my little sheep? We must
look after him then.

--I repeat, Monseigneur, that that would be nothing.... It is the
abomination of abomination, a whole world of turpitude, heresies in embryo.

--Heresies! Oh, oh! That is serious.

--Heresies which would make the cursed shades of John Huss, Wickliffe,
Luther and Calvin himself tremble, if they appeared again.

--What do you say?

--I tell you, Monseigneur, that you have warmed a viper in your bosom.

--Ah, well, I will drive out this wicked viper.

The Bishop, who kept two nieces in the episcopal seraglio, would willingly
have pardoned his secretary if he had been accused of immorality, but he
could not carry his condescension so far as heresy. He wanted, however, to
assure himself personally, and as Marcel was incapable of lying, he quickly
recognized the sad reality.

The young Abbe was severely punished. He was compelled to make an apology,
to retract his horrible ideas, to stifle the germ of these infant
monstrosities; then he was condemned to spend six months in one of those
ecclesiastical prisons called _houses of retreat_, where the guilty priest
is exposed to every torment and every vexation.

He was definitely marked and classed as a dangerous individual.

His enemy, the Grand-Vicar, pursued him with his indefatigable hatred, so
far that from disgrace to disgrace he had reached the cure of Althausen.

XLIII.

ESPIONAGE.

"A sunbeam had traversed his heart;
it had just disappeared."

ERNEST DAUDET (_Les Duperies de l'Amour_).

Since the fatal evening when the secret of his new-born love had been
discovered by his servant, Marcel had observed the woman on his steps,
watching his slightest proceedings, scrutinizing his most innocent
gestures.

He encountered everywhere her keen inquisitive look.

He wished at first to meet it with the greatest circumspection and the most
absolute reserve. He avoided all conversation which he thought might lead
him into the way of fresh confidences,