s, looking at me as he spoke with a
kind, earnest fear, almost trembling lest there should be truth in the
charges. Pere Silas, it seems, had closely watched me, had ascertained
that I went by turns, and indiscriminately, to the three Protestant
Chapels of Villette--the French, German, and English--_id est_, the
Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian. Such liberality argued in the
father's eyes profound indifference--who tolerates all, he reasoned,
can be attached to none. Now, it happened that I had often secretly
wondered at the minute and unimportant character of the differences
between these three sects--at the unity and identity of their vital
doctrines: I saw nothing to hinder them from being one day fused into
one grand Holy Alliance, and I respected them all, though I thought
that in each there were faults of form, incumbrances, and trivialities.
Just what I thought, that did I tell M. Emanuel, and explained to him
that my own last appeal, the guide to which I looked, and the teacher
which I owned, must always be the Bible itself, rather than any sect,
of whatever name or nation.

He left me soothed, yet full of solicitude, breathing a wish, as strong
as a prayer, that if I were wrong, Heaven would lead me right. I heard,
poured forth on the threshold, some fervid murmurings to "Marie, Reine
du Ciel," some deep aspiration that _his_ hope might yet be _mine_.

Strange! I had no such feverish wish to turn him from the faith of his
fathers. I thought Romanism wrong, a great mixed image of gold and
clay; but it seemed to me that _this_ Romanist held the purer elements
of his creed with an innocency of heart which God must love.

The preceding conversation passed between eight and nine o'clock of the
evening, in a schoolroom of the quiet Rue Fossette, opening on a
sequestered garden. Probably about the same, or a somewhat later hour
of the succeeding evening, its echoes, collected by holy obedience,
were breathed verbatim in an attent ear, at the panel of a
confessional, in the hoary church of the Magi. It ensued that Pere
Silas paid a visit to Madame Beck, and stirred by I know not what
mixture of motives, persuaded her to let him undertake for a time the
Englishwoman's spiritual direction.

Hereupon I was put through a course of reading--that is, I just glanced
at the books lent me; they were too little in my way to be thoroughly
read, marked, learned, or inwardly digested. And besides, I had a book
up-stairs, un