gether: but I thought of this; and, on the whole,
preferred the latter doctrine as the most consolatory. The little book
amused, and did not painfully displease me. It was a canting,
sentimental, shallow little book, yet something about it cheered my
gloom and made me smile; I was amused with the gambols of this unlicked
wolf-cub muffled in the fleece, and mimicking the bleat of a guileless
lamb. Portions of it reminded me of certain Wesleyan Methodist tracts I
had once read when a child; they were flavoured with about the same
seasoning of excitation to fanaticism. He that had written it was no
bad man, and while perpetually betraying the trained cunning--the
cloven hoof of his system--I should pause before accusing himself of
insincerity. His judgment, however, wanted surgical props; it was
rickety.

I smiled then over this dose of maternal tenderness, coming from the
ruddy old lady of the Seven Hills; smiled, too, at my own
disinclination, not to say disability, to meet these melting favours.
Glancing at the title-page, I found the name of "Pere Silas." A
fly-leaf bore in small, but clear and well-known pencil characters:
"From P. C. D. E. to L--y." And when I saw this I laughed: but not in
my former spirit. I was revived.

A mortal bewilderment cleared suddenly from my head and vision; the
solution of the Sphinx-riddle was won; the conjunction of those two
names, Pere Silas and Paul Emanuel, gave the key to all. The penitent
had been with his director; permitted to withhold nothing; suffered to
keep no corner of his heart sacred to God and to himself; the whole
narrative of our late interview had been drawn from him; he had avowed
the covenant of fraternity, and spoken of his adopted sister. How could
such a covenant, such adoption, be sanctioned by the Church? Fraternal
communion with a heretic! I seemed to hear Pere Silas annulling the
unholy pact; warning his penitent of its perils; entreating, enjoining
reserve, nay, by the authority of his office, and in the name, and by
the memory of all M. Emanuel held most dear and sacred, commanding the
enforcement of that new system whose frost had pierced to the marrow of
my bones.

These may not seem pleasant hypotheses; yet, by comparison, they were
welcome. The vision of a ghostly troubler hovering in the background,
was as nothing, matched with the fear of spontaneous change arising in
M. Paul himself.

At this distance of time, I cannot be sure how far the above