ion and
this silence, his adversary would exult; but just as he thought he had
convinced this rebellious soul, Patience, hearing the village clock
strike midnight, would rise, take an affectionate leave of his host, and
on the very threshold of the vicarage, would dismay the good man with
some laconic and cutting comment that confounded Saint Jerome and Plato
alike, Eusebius equally with Seneca, Tertullian no less than Aristotle.

The cure was not too ready to acknowledge the superiority of this
untutored intellect. Still, he was quite astonished at passing so many
winter evenings by his fireside with this peasant without feeling
either bored or tired; and he would wonder how it was that the village
schoolmaster, and even the prior of the convent, in spite of their Greek
and Latin, appeared to him, the one a bore, the other a sophist, in all
their discussions. Knowing the perfect purity of the peasant's life,
he attributed the ascendency of his mind to the power of virtue and the
charm it spreads over all things. Then, each evening, he would humbly
accuse himself before God of not having disputed with his pupil from a
sufficiently Christian point of view; he would confess to his guardian
angel that pride in his own learning and joy at being listened to
so devoutly had carried him somewhat beyond the bounds of religious
instruction; that he had quoted profane writers too complacently;
that he had even experienced a dangerous pleasure in roaming with
his disciple through the fields of the past, plucking pagan flowers
unsprinkled by the waters of baptism, flowers in whose fragrance a
priest should not have found such delight.

On his side, Patience loved the cure dearly. He was his only friend,
his only bond of union with society, his only bond of union, through
the light of knowledge, with God. The peasant largely over-estimated his
pastor's learning. He did not know that even the most enlightened men
often draw wrong conclusions, or no conclusions at all, from the course
of progress. Patience would have been spared great distress of mind if
he could have seen for certain that his master was frequently mistaken
and that it was the man, not the truth, that was at fault. Not knowing
this, and finding the experience of the ages at variance with his innate
sense of justice, he was continually a prey to agonizing reveries; and,
living by himself, and wandering through the country at all hours of the
day and night, wrapped in