death's-heads, etc. Now imagine
this scene in twilight, with its solitary and mournful silence, only
broken at the hour of prayer by the lugubrious sound of the bells of the
neighboring chapel, and you will recognize the infernal skill, with which
these dangerous priests know how to turn to account every external
object, when they wish to influence the mind of those they are anxious to
gain over.

And this was not all. After appealing to the senses, it was necessary to
address themselves to the intellect--and this was the method adopted by
the reverend fathers. A single book--but one--was left, as if by chance,
within reach. This book was Thomas a Kempis' "Imitation." But as it might
happen that M. Hardy would not have the courage or the desire to read
this book, thoughts and reflections borrowed from its merciless pages,
and written in very large characters, were suspended in black frames
close to the bed, or at other parts within sight, so that, involuntarily,
in the sad leisure of his inactive dejection, the dweller's eyes were
almost necessarily attracted by them. To that fatal circle of despairing
thoughts they confined the already weakened mind of this unfortunate man,
so long a prey to the most acute sorrow. What he read mechanically, every
instant of the day and night, whenever the blessed sleep fled from his
eyes inflamed with tears, was not enough merely to plunge the soul of the
victim into incurable despair, but also to reduce him to the corpse-like
obedience required by the Society of Jesus. In that awful book may be
found a thousand terrors to operate on weak minds, a thousand slavish
maxims to chain and degrade the pusillanimous soul.

And now imagine M. Hardy carried wounded into this house; while his
heart, torn by bitter grief and the sense of horrible treachery, bled
even faster than his external injuries. Attended with the utmost care,
and thanks to the acknowledged skill of Dr. Baleinier, M. Hardy soon
recovered from the hurts he had received when he threw himself into the
embers of his burning factory. Yet, in order to favor the projects of the
reverend fathers, a drug, harmless enough in its effects, but destined to
act for a time upon the mind of the patient, and often employed for that
purpose in similar important cases by the pious doctor, was administered
to Hardy, and had kept him pretty long in a state of mental torpor. To a
soul agonized by cruel deceptions, it appears an inestimable benefi