, Girard's women and those of the bishop. On
the side of the latter were a German lady and her daughter, dear
friends of Cadiere's. On the other side were the rebels, headed by the
Guiol. With her the bishop treated, in hopes of getting her to enter
into relations with the Carmelite, and bring her friends over to him.
He sent her his own clerk, and then a solicitor, an old lover of
Guiol's. All this failing of any effect, the bishop came to his last
resource, determined to summon them all to his palace. Here they
mostly denied those trances and mystic marks of which they had made
such boast. One of them, Guiol, of course, astonished him yet more by
her shamelessly treacherous offer to prove to him, on the spot, that
they had no marks whatever about their bodies. They had deemed him
wanton enough to fall into such a snare. But he kept clear of it very
well, declining the offer with thanks to those who, at the cost of
their own modesty, would have had him copy Girard, and provoke the
laughter of all the town.

The bishop was not lucky. On the one hand, these bold wenches made fun
of him. On the other, his success with Cadiere was now being undone.
She had hardly entered her own narrow lane in gloomy Toulon, when she
began to fall off. She was just in those dangerous and baleful centres
where her illness began, on the very field of the battle waged by the
two hostile parties. The Jesuits, whose rearguard everyone saw in the
Court, had on their side the crafty, the prudent, the knowing. The
Carmelite had none but the bishop with him, was not even backed by his
own brethren, nor yet by the clergy. He had one weapon, however, in
reserve. On the 8th November, he got out of Cadiere a written power to
reveal her confession in case of need.

It was a daring, dauntless step, which made Girard shudder. He was
not very brave, and would have been undone had his cause not been that
of the Jesuits also. He cowered down in the depths of their college.
But his colleague Sabatier, an old, sanguine, passionate fellow, went
straight to the bishop's palace. He entered into the prelate's
presence, like another Popilius, bearing peace or war in his gown. He
pushed him to the wall, made him understand that a suit with the
Jesuits would lead to his own undoing; that he would remain for ever
Bishop of Toulon; would never rise to an archbishopric. Yet further,
with the freedom of an apostle strong at Versailles, he assured him
that if this affai