THE SALE OF INDULGENCES.
The morning after the trying night experienced by Christian and his
wife, a large crowd filled the church of the Dominican Convent. It was a
bizarre crowd. It consisted of people of all conditions. Thieves and
mendicants, artisans, bourgeois and seigneurs, lost women and devout old
dames, ladies of distinction and plebeian women and children of all
ages, elbowed one another. They were all attracted by that day's
religious celebration; they crowded especially near the choir. This
space was shut off by an iron railing four feet in height; it was to be
the theater of the most important incidents in the ceremony. Among the
spectators nearest to the choir stood Herve Lebrenn together with his
friend Fra Girard. The Franciscan monk was about twenty-five years of
age, and of a cadaverous, austere countenance. The mask of asceticism
concealed an infernal knave gifted with superior intelligence. The monk
enveloped his young companion, so to speak, with a fascinating gaze; the
latter, apparently a prey to profound preoccupation, bent his head and
crossed his arms over his breast.
"Herve," said Fra Girard in a low voice, "do you remember the day when
in a fit of despair and terror you came to me to confession--and
confessed a thing that you hardly dared admit to yourself?"
"Yes," answered Herve with a shudder and dropping his eyes still lower;
"yes, I remember the day."
"I then told you," the Franciscan proceeded to say, "that the Catholic
Church, from which you were separated from childhood by an impious
education, afforded consolation to troubled hearts--even better, held
out hope--still better than that, gave positive assurance even to the
worst of sinners, provided they had faith. By little and little our long
and frequent conversations succeeded in causing the divine light to
penetrate your mind, and the scales dropped from your eyes. The faith
that I then preached to you, has since filled and now overflows your
soul. Fasting, maceration and ardent prayer have smoothed the way for
your salvation. The hour of your reward has arrived. Blessed be the
Lord!"
Fra Girard had hardly uttered these words when the deep notes of the
organ filled with a melancholic harmony the lugubrious church into which
the light of day broke only through narrow windows of colored glass. A
procession that issued from the interior of the Dominican cloister
entered the church and marched around the aisles. The cortege was headed
by four footmen clad in red, the papal livery, who held aloft four
standards upon which the pontifical coat-of-arms was emblazoned; they
were followed by priests in surplices surrounding a cross and chanting
psalms of penitence; behind these came another platoon of papal
footmen, bearing a stretcher covered with gold cloth, and in the center
of which, on a cushion of crimson velvet, lay a red box containing the
bull of Leo X empowering the Order of St. Dominic to dispense
indulgences. Several censer-bearers walked backward before the
stretcher, and stopped from time to time in order to swing their copper
and silver censers from which clouds of perfumed vapor issued and
circled upward. A Dominican prior walked behind the stretcher clasping a
large cross of red wood in his arms; this dignitary--a man in the full
vigor of age, tall of stature and so corpulent that his paunch
threatened to burst his frock--was the Apostolic Commissioner entrusted
with the sale of indulgences; a heavy black beard framed in his
high-colored face; the monk's triumphant gait and the haughty looks that
he cast around him pointed him out as the hero of the approaching
ceremony. He was followed by a long line of penitentiaries and
sub-Apostolic Commissioners with white wands in their hands. A last
squad of papal footmen, holding by leather straps a huge coffer also
covered with crimson velvet and locked with three gilded clasps, closed
the procession. A slit, similar to that of the poor-boxes in churches,
was cut into the lid of the coffer. Through it the moneys were to be
dropped by the purchasers of indulgences, or by the faithful, anxious to
redeem the souls in purgatory.
When the procession, at the passage of which the crowd prostrated itself
religiously, completed the circuit of the church, the papal footmen who
bore the banners grouped them as trophies upon the main altar, before
which the stretcher, covered with gold cloth, the bull, and the big
coffer were processionally borne. The Apostolic Commissioner with the
cross of red wood in his hand placed himself near the coffer; the
penitentiaries ranked themselves in front of several confessionals that
were set up for the occasion near the choir, and all of which bore the
pontifical arms.
The excitement and curiosity awakened by the procession together with
the peals of the organ and the chant of the priests excited a
considerable agitation in the church. By degrees quiet was restored, the
kneeling faithful rose again to their feet, and all eyes turned
impatiently towards the choir. Herve, who had been one of the first to
prostrate himself, was among the last to rise; the lad was a prey to
profound agony; perspiration bathed his now livid face; he was hardly
able to breathe. Turning his wandering eyes towards Fra Girard, he said
to the monk in broken accents:
"Oh, if I only can rely upon your promises! The moment has arrived when
I must believe. I tremble!"
"Oh, man of little faith!" answered the Franciscan with severity and
pointing to the papal commissioner, who was preparing to speak;
"listen--and repent that you doubted. Ask God to pardon you."
The silence became profound; the dealer in indulgences deftly rolled up
the sleeves of his robe, just as a juggler in the market would have done
in order not to be hindered in the tumultuous motions of his
performance, and pointing to the red cross which he placed beside him,
he cried in a stentorian voice fit to make the glass windows of the
building rattle:
"In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen![5] You see
this cross, my beloved brothers? Well, this cross is as efficacious as
the cross of Jesus Christ! You will ask me, How so? My answer is that
this is, so to speak, the symbol of the indulgences that our Holy Father
has commissioned me to dispense. But what are these indulgences? you
will then ask? What they are, my brothers? They are the most precious
gift, the most miraculous, the most wonderful that the Lord has ever
bestowed upon His faithful! Therefore, I say unto you--Come, come to me;
I shall give you letters furnished with the seal of our Holy Father, and
thanks to these letters, my brothers--would you believe it?--not only
will the sins that you have committed be pardoned, but they will give
you absolution for the sins that you desire to commit!"
"Did you hear that?" Fra Girard whispered to Herve. "One can obtain
absolution both for the sins that he has committed, and for the sins
that he intends to commit!"
"But--there--are--things--crimes and outrages," stammered Herve with
secret horror, "that, may be, one can not obtain absolution for! Oh, woe
is me! I feel myself sliding down a fatal slope!
"Listen," replied the Franciscan, "listen to the end; you will then
understand."
The mass of people that were crowded in the church received with
indescribable signs of satisfaction the words uttered by the Dominican
seller of indulgences; especially did those whose purses were well lined
hail with delight the prospect of their salvation if they but took the
precaution of equipping themselves in advance with an absolution that
embraced the past, the present and the future. The Apostolic
Commissioner observed the magic effect that his words produced; in a
jovial and familiar tone he proceeded to harangue the audience amidst
violent contortions of both face and limbs:
"Now, let us have a heart-to-heart talk, my brothers; let us reason
together. Let us suppose that you wish to undertake a voyage into some
strange country that is infested with thieves; fearing that you will be
rifled of all that you carry about you before you attain the end of your
journey, you do not wish to take your money with you. What do you do?
You take your money to a banker, do you not? You allow him a slight
profit, and he furnishes you with a draft, by means of which the money
that you deposited with him is paid over to you in the strange country,
upon your arrival there. Do you understand me well, my beloved
brothers?"
"Yes," answered several of the faithful; "we understand--proceed with
your discourse."
"Miserable sinners!" replied the Dominican suddenly changing his jovial
tone into a thundering voice. "Miserable sinners! You understand me, say
you? and yet you hesitate to buy from me for the small price of a few
crowns a draft of salvation! What! Despite all the sins that you may
render yourselves guilty of during the voyage of life, infested as that
road is with diabolical temptations that are infinitely more dangerous
than thieves, this draft will be paid to you in paradise in the divine
money of eternal salvation by the Almighty, upon whom we, the bankers of
souls, have drawn in your name--and yet you hesitate to insure to
yourselves at so small a cost your share of the celestial enjoyments
reserved for the blissful! No! No! You will not hesitate, my brothers!
You will buy my indulgences!" the Dominican now proceeded to say with a
resumption of familiar and even paternal solicitude. "Nor is this all,
my brothers; my indulgences do not save the living only, they redeem the
dead! Aye, the dead, be they even as hardened as Lucifer himself! But,
you may ask, how can your indulgences deliver the dead?" cried the
merchant of salvation again shouting at the top of his voice, "How will
my indulgences save the dead? Can it be that you do not hear the voices
of your parents, your friends, even of strangers to you--but what does
that matter, seeing that you are Christians?--can it be that you do not
hear their frightful concert of maledictions, of groans, of gnashing of
teeth which rises from the bottom of the abyss of fire, where those poor
souls are writhing in the furnace of purgatory--where they writhe,
waiting for the mercy of God or the pious works of man to deliver them
from their dreadful tortures? Can it be that you do not hear those
miserable sinners, the piteous meanings of those unhappy people, who
from the bottom of the yawning gulf where the flames are devouring them
cry out to you: 'Oh, ye stony hearts! we are enduring frightful torture!
An alms would deliver us! You can give it! Will you refuse to give it?'
Will you refuse, my brothers? No! I know you will give the alms. I know
you will give it when you consider that the very instant your gold
crowns drop into this trunk," (pointing to it) "crack--psitt--the soul
pops out of purgatory and flies into heaven like a dove liberated from
its cage! Amen! Empty your purses, empty your purses, my friends!"
The majority of the audience before the Dominican seemed little
concerned about the deliverance of souls in pain. However blind their
superstitious belief, it had a certain charitable side, but that side
had no attraction whatever for the faithful ones who were attracted only
by the expectation of being able, by means of indulgences, to give a
loose, in perfect security of conscience, to whatever excesses or crimes
they had in mind.
A man with a gallows-bird face named Pichrocholle, one of the
Mauvais-Garcons who hired out their homicidal daggers to the highest
bidder, said in a low voice to a Tire-Laine, another bandit, and one of
the worst of his kind:
"As truly as the Franc-Taupin whom I was speaking about to you a short
time ago saved my life at the battle of Marignan, I would not give six
silver sous for the redemption of the souls in purgatory! Oh, if I only
were rich enough to purchase a good letter of absolution--'sdeath!--I
would pay for it gladly and spot-cash, too! Once the papal absolution
is in your pocket, your hand is firmer at its work; it does not tremble
when dispatching your man! With an absolution duly executed, you can
defy the fork of Satan on the Judgment Day. But by St. Cadouin, what do
I care for the souls in purgatory! I laugh at their deliverance! And
you, Grippe-Minaud?"
"I confess," answered the Tire-Laine, "I bother as little about the
souls in purgatory as about an empty purse. But tell me, Pichrocholle,"
added Grippe-Minaud with a pensive air, "letters of absolution are too
dear for poor devils like ourselves--suppose we stole one of those
blessed letters from the commissioner, would the theft be a sin?"
"'Sdeath! How could it be? Does it not give absolution in advance? But
those jewels are kept too safely to be pilfered."
While the Mauvais-Garcon and the Tire-Laine were exchanging these
observations, the Apostolic Commissioner rolled his sleeves still
higher, and continued his sermon, interspersing his words with smiles or
violent gestures according as the occasion demanded:
"But, my brothers, you will say to me: You puff your indulgences a good
deal; nevertheless there are such frightful crimes, crimes that are so
abominable, so monstrous that your indulgences could never reach them!
You are mistaken, my brothers. No! A thousand times no! My indulgences
are so good, they are so sure, they are so efficacious, so powerful that
they absolve everything--yes, everything! Do you want an example? Let us
suppose an impossible thing--let us suppose that someone were to rape
the holy Mother of God--an abominable act of sacrilege!"[6]
A long murmur expressive of dreadful suspense and hope received these
last words of the trafficker in indulgences; a boundless horizon was
opened for all manner of the blackest and most unheard-of felonies.
Among others in the crowd, Herve remained hanging upon the lips of the
Dominican; the lad was seized with dizziness; he imagined himself
oppressed by a nightmare. The hollow-sounding voice of Fra Girard awoke
him to reality. With a triumphant accent the Franciscan whispered to his
disciple:
"An insult to the Mother of God herself would be pardoned! Even such a
crime would be reached by an indulgence! Did you hear him? Did you? An
indulgence would cover even that!"
A tremor ran through Herve from head to foot; he made no answer, hid his
face in his hands, and feeling himself reel like an intoxicated man and
even his knees to yield under him, the lad found himself obliged to lean
upon the arms of the Franciscan, who contemplated him with an expression
of infernal joy.
The merchant of indulgences had paused for a moment upon uttering his
abominable supposition in order the better to assure himself of its
effect; he then proceeded in a stentorian voice:
"You tremble, my brothers! So much the better! That proves that you
appreciate in the fulness of its horror the sacrilege which I cited as
an example! Now, then, the more horrible the sacrilege, all the more
sovereign is the virtue of my indulgences, seeing that they give
absolution therefor! Yes, my brothers, whatever the sacrilege that you
may commit, you will be pardoned--provided you pay for it--provided you
pay bountifully for it! That is clearer than day! Our Lord God will have
no power over you, he ceases to be God, having assigned His pardoning
power to the Pope. But, you may still ask, why does our Holy Father so
bountifully distribute the boon of his indulgences? Why?" repeated the
Dominican in a voice of deep lament; "why? Alas! alas! alas! my
brothers, it is in order to be enabled, thanks to the returns from the
sales of these indulgences, to rebuild the Basilica of St. Peter and St.
Paul in Rome with such splendor that there is none to match it in the
world. Indeed, none other must be like that basilica, which contains the
sacred bodies of the two apostles! And this notwithstanding--would you
believe it, my brothers?--the Cathedral of Rome is in such a state of
dilapidation that the holy bones, the sacrosanct bones of St. Peter and
St. Paul are so constantly exposed to the peltings of rain and hail,
they are so soiled and dishonored by dust and vermin that they are
falling to pieces!"
A shudder of painful indignation ran over the faithful crowd assembled
before the Dominican when thus informed that the relics of the apostles
were exposed to the inclemencies of the weather and the soilure of
vermin as a result of the dilapidated state of the Basilica of Rome,
while, since then, the most marvelous monument of architecture that
immortalizes the genius of Michael Angelo, was reared to the admiration
of the world. Perceiving the effect made by his peroration, the
Dominican proceeded in a thundering voice:
"No, my brothers! No! The sacred ashes of the apostles shall no longer
remain in dirt and disgrace! No! Indulgence has set up its throne in the
Church of St. Dominic!" and pointing to the large coffer and beating
with his fists a tattoo upon the lid, the Apostolic Commissioner added
with the roar of a bull: "Now, bring your money! Bring it, good people!
Bring plenty! I shall put you the example of charity. I consecrate this
gold piece to the redemption of souls in purgatory!"
And pulling out of his pocket a half ducat which he held up glistening
to the eyes of the crowd, he dropped it into the coffer through the slit
in the lid, upon which he continued to strike with his fists, keeping
time to his words as he cried:
"Fetch your money! Fetch it, good people! Fetch your ducats!"
The front ranks of the crowd broke in response to the summons of the
trafficker in indulgences and hastened to empty their purses. But the
Dominican held back the surging crowd with a gesture of his hand and
said:
"One more word, my dear brothers! Do you see these confessionals
decorated with the armorial bearings of the Holy Father? The priests who
will take your confessions represent the apostolic penitentiaries of
Rome on the occasions of grand jubilees. All those who wish to
participate in the three principal indulgences will proceed to these
confessionals and will conscientiously notify the confessor of the
amount of money that they are disposed to deprive themselves of in order
to obtain the following favors:
"The first is the absolute remission of all sins--past, present and
future.
"The second is freedom from participation in the works of the Holy
Church, such as fasts, prayers, pilgrimages and macerations of all
nature.
"The third--listen carefully, my brothers, pay particular attention to
the last words, as the saying is--this indulgence exceeds all that the
most faithful believers can wish for!"
"Listen," whispered Fra Girard to Herve; "listen, and repent your having
doubted the resources of the faith."
"Oh, I doubt no longer, and yet I hardly dare to hope," murmured the son
of Christian with bated breath, while the Dominican proceeded to
announce aloud:
"The third favor, my brothers, gives you the right to choose a
confessor, who, every time that you fear you are about to die, will be
bound--by virtue of the letter of absolution that you will have
purchased and which you will display before him--to give you absolution
not only for your ordinary sins, but also for those greater crimes the
remission of which is reserved to the apostolic See, to wit, bestiality,
the crime against nature, parricide and incest."
The Dominican had hardly pronounced these words when Herve's features
became frightful to behold. The lad's eyes shot fire, and a smile of the
damned curled his lips as Fra Girard stooped down to him and whispered
in his ear:
"Did I deceive you? The indulgence is absolute, even for incest."
"Finally, my brothers," the Apostolic Commissioner proceeded to say,
"the fourth favor consists in redeeming souls from purgatory. For this
favor, my brothers, it is not necessary, as for the three first ones, to
be contrite of heart and to confess. No, no! It is enough if you drop
your offerings in this coffer. You will thereby snatch the souls of the
dead from the tortures that they are undergoing; and you will be
moreover contributing towards the holy work of restoring the Basilica of
St. Peter and St. Paul at Rome. Now, then, my brothers," he added,
thumping anew upon the coffer, "come forward with your money! Come
forward with your ducats! Come!"
Upon this last exhortation the railing of the choir was thrown open. The
small number of the charitably disposed who wished to deliver the souls
in pain began filing before the coffer into which they dropped their
offerings after making the sign of the cross; the confessionals,
however, in which the pontifical penitentiaries took their seats, ready
to issue letters of absolution, were immediately besieged by a mob of
men and women, anxious to obtain impunity in the eyes of heaven and of
their own conscience for sins ranging from the most venial up to
monstrous deeds that cause nature to shudder. It was a frightful sight,
the spectacle presented by the mob around these confessionals crowding
to the quarry of impunity for crime.
Good God! Your vicars order and exploit the traffic! Behold human
conscience upturned, shaken at its very foundation, losing even the
sense of discrimination between vice and virtue! The moral sense is
perverted, it is smothered by sacrilegious superstition! Mankind is
lashed to a vertigo of folly and evil by the assurance of impunity,
feeling certain, Oh, God of justice! of having You for an accomplice!
Souls, until then innocent, no longer recoil before any passion however
execrable, the bare thought of which is a crime! Does not the Pope of
Rome absolve for all eternity, in exchange for a few gold crowns, even
parricide and incest? If only its faith is strong enough the incestuous
or parricidal heart knows, feels itself absolved! Oh, in honor at least
to the religious sentiment--the divine gift implanted in man's heart,
whatever the dogma may be in which it is wrapped--there are Catholic
priests of austere morals who, despite their intolerance, have, in these
accursed times, indignantly repudiated the monstrous idolatries and
savage fetichism that even ancient paganism knew nothing of! No! No!
Christ, your celestial gospel is and will remain the most scathing
condemnation of the horrors that are committed in your venerated name.
Those papal penitentiaries in the confessionals emblazoned with the
pontifical arms, those new dealers in merchandise in the Temple dare to
sell for cash patents of salvation! Alas! After a few hurried words
exchanged with Fra Girard, Herve was one of the first to hurry to the
confessionals and kneel down; he did not long remain there; those near
him heard the papal penitentiary first utter a cry of surprise; silence
ensued, broken by the intermittent sobs of the lad; the chinking of the
money that was being counted out to the priest in the confessional
announced the close of the absolutional conversation. Herve issued out
of the tribunal of penitence holding a parchment with a convulsive
clutch, closely followed by Fra Girard; he cleaved the compact mass of
people, and withdrew to one of the lateral chapels; there he knelt down
before a sanctuary of the Virgin that a lamp illumined, and by its light
read the letter of absolution that he had just bought with his father's
money. The pontifical letter was couched in the following terms:
May our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon you [here followed a
blank space into which the name of the owner of the letter was to
be inserted]; may He absolve you by the virtue of the Holy Passion.
And I, in virtue of the apostolical power in me vested, do hereby
absolve you from all ecclesiastical censures, judgments and
punishments that you may have deserved; furthermore _of all
excesses, sins and crimes that you may have committed, however
grave and enormous these may be, and whatever the cause thereof_,
even if such sins and crimes be those reserved to our Holy Father
the Pope and to the apostolic See--_such as bestiality, the sin
against nature, parricide and incest_. I hereby efface from you all
traces of inability, all the marks of infamy that you may have
drawn upon yourself on such occasions; I induct you anew as a
participant of the sacraments of the Church; I re-incorporate you
in the community of saints; I restore you to the innocence and
purity that you were in at the hour of your baptism, so that, at
the hour of your death, the door through which one passes to the
place of torments and pain shall be closed to you, while on the
contrary, the gate that leads to the Paradise of joy shall be wide
open to you, _and should you not die speedily, Oh, my son! this
token of mercy shall remain unalterable until your ultimate end_.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen!
BROTHER JOHN TEZEL,
Apostolic Commissioner, signed by his own hand.[7]
Without rising from his knees Herve frequently interrupted the reading
of the document with suppressed signs of pleased and blissful
astonishment. The absolution that he was now the owner of extended to
the past, it covered the present, it reached the future. As Fra Girard
called the purchaser's attention to the fact, the document bore no date
and thereby extended the apostolic efficacy over all the sins, all the
crimes that the holder of the indulgence might commit to the end of his
days. Herve folded the parchment and inserted it into the scapulary that
hung from his neck under his shirt, bowed down till his forehead touched
the slab of the floor at the foot of the sanctuary and kissed it
devoutly. Alas! The unfortunate lad was sincere in his frightful
thankfulness towards the divine power that granted him the remission.
His mind being led astray by a detestable influence, he felt himself,
he believed himself, absolved of all the wrongs that his delirious
imagination raved over. Fra Girard contemplated the prostrate lad with
an expression of sinister triumph. The latter suddenly rose and, as if
seized with a vertigo, staggered towards the railing of the chapel. The
Franciscan held him back by the arm, and pointing at the image of the
Virgin, arrayed in a flowing robe of silver cloth studded with pearls,
and her head crowned with a golden crown that glistened in the
semi-darkness of the dimly-lighted sanctuary, said in a solemn voice:
"Behold the image of the mother of our Savior, and remember the words of
the Apostolic Commissioner. Even if the horrible sacrilege that he
mentioned were a feasible thing, it could be absolved by the letter that
you now own. If that is so, and it may not be doubted, what then becomes
of the remorse and the terrors that have assailed you during the last
three months? Since the day when, distracted with despair by the
discovery of the frightful secret that had lain concealed in the bottom
of your heart, you came to me, and yielding, despite yourself, to the
irresistible instinct that whispered to you: 'Only in faith will you be
healed,' you confessed your trials to me--since that day you have hourly
realized that your instinct guided you rightly and that my words were
true. To-day you are assured of a place in paradise. Herve--do you hear
me?"
"I hear," and after a moment of pensiveness: "Oh, celestial miracle for
which, with my forehead in the dust, I rendered thanks to the mother of
our Savior. Yes, since a minute ago, from the moment that I became the
owner of this sacred schedule, my conscience has regained its former
serenity, my mind is in peace, my heart is full of hope. I now only need
to will and to dare--I shall will, I shall dare! Mine is the bliss of
paradise!"
Herve uttered these words with calm conviction. He did not lie. No, his
conscience was serene, his mind at peace, his heart full of hope, even
the lines on his face seemed suddenly transfigured; their savage and
tormented expression made room for a sort of blissful ecstasy, a slight
flush again enlivened the cheeks that frequent fasts, macerations and
mental conflicts had paled. The monk smiled silently at the
metamorphosis; he took Herve by the arm, walked with him out of the
church, and as the two stepped out upon the street said to him:
"You have now entered upon the path of salvation; your faith has been
tried--will you still hesitate to join the ranks of the militants, who
openly preach and cause this faith to triumph, the miraculous efficacy
of which you have yourself experienced this day? Think of the glory of
our holy mother the Church."
"Speak not now to me of such things. My thoughts are elsewhere--they are
near my sister Hena."
"Very well; but, Herve, never forget what I have often told you, and
that your modesty makes you disregard. Your intelligence is exceptional;
your erudition extensive; heaven has endowed you with the precious gift
of a persuasive eloquence; the monastic Orders, especially the one to
which I belong, I say so in all humility, recruit themselves carefully
with young men whose gifts give promise of a brilliant future; this is
enough to tell you of what priceless value you would be to our Order;
you could make with us a rapid and brilliant career; you might even
become the prior of our monastery. But I shall not pursue this subject;
you are not listening to me; we shall take up the matter later. Where
are you going so fast?"
"I am going back to my father, to the printing shop of Master Robert
Estienne."
"Be prudent--above all, no indiscretion!"
"Girard," answered Herve with a slightly moved voice and after a
second's reflection, "I know not what may happen during the next few
days; I will, and I shall dare; can I at all events count upon obtaining
asylum in your cell?"
"Whatever the hour of the day or night may be, you may ring at the
little gate of the convent, where the faithful repair who come to ask
our assistance for the dying; ask the brother gateman for me; that will
let you in and you will find an inviolable asylum within our walls; you
will there be sheltered from all pursuit."
"I thank you for the promise, and I rely upon it. Adieu. Think of me in
your prayers."
"Adieu, and let me see you soon again," answered the Franciscan as he
followed with his eyes the rapidly retreating figure of Herve. "Whatever
may happen," added Fra Girard to himself, "he now belongs to us, body
and soul. Such acquisitions are precious in these days of implacable
struggle against heresy. God be praised!"