at soul which had worked out its own destiny in
a little back garden of the world.

When this good priest was alive she felt she had a friend who was
as large of heart as he was just, and who would not scorn the fool
according to his folly, or chastise the erring after his deserts. In his
greatness of soul Pere Langon had shut his eyes to things that pained
him more than they shocked him, for he had seen life in its most various
and demoralized forms, and indeed had had his own temptations when he
lived in Belgium and France, before he had finally decided to become a
priest. He had protected Carmen with a quiet persistency since her first
day in the parish, and had had a saving influence over her. Pere Langon
reproved those who criticized her and even slandered her, for it was
evident to all that she would rather have men talk to her than women;
and any summer visitor who came to fish, gave her an attention never
given even to the youngest and brightest in the district; and the eyes
of the habitant lass can be very bright at twenty. Yet whatever Carmen's
coquetry and her sport with fire had been, her own emotions had never
been really involved till now.

The new cure, M. Savry, would have said they were involved now because
she never came to confession, and indeed, since the Old Cure died,
she had seldom gone to mass. Yet when, with accumulated reproof on his
tongue, M. Savry did come to the Manor Cartier, he felt the inherent
supremacy of beauty, not the less commanding because it had not the
refinement of the duchess or the margravine.

Once M. Savry ventured to do what the Old Cure would never have
done--he spoke to Jean Jacques concerning Carmen's neglect of mass and
confession, and he received a rebuff which was almost au seigneur; for
in Jean Jacques' eyes he was now the figure in St. Saviour's; and this
was an occasion when he could assert his position as premier of the
secular world outside the walls of the parish church. He did it in good
style for a man who had had no particular training in the social arts.

This is how he did it and what he said:

"There have been times when I myself have thought it would be a good
thing to have a rest from the duties of a Catholic, m'sieu' le cure," he
remarked to M. Savry, when the latter had ended his criticism. He said
it with an air of conflict, and with full intent to make his supremacy
complete.

"No Catholic should speak like that," returned the shocked priest.