tion, continued to read:

"'After some years, during which he had never ceased to profess the
most absolute devotion to this Society, he was suddenly enlightened by
fearful revelations as to the secret ends it pursued, and the means it
employed.

"'This was in 1510, a month before the assassination of Henry IV.
"'My grandfather, terrified at the secret of which he had become the
unwilling depositary, and which was to be fully explained by the death
of the best of kings, not only broke with the Society, but, as if
Catholicism itself had been answerable for the crimes of its members,
he abandoned the Romish religion, in which he had hitherto lived, and
became a Protestant.

"'Undeniable proofs, attesting the connivance of two members of the
Company with Ravaillac, a connivance also proved in the case of Jean
Chatel, the regicide, were in my grandfather's possession.

"'This was the first cause of the violent hatred of the Society for our
family. Thank Heaven, these papers have been placed in safety, and if my
last will is executed, will be found marked A. M.C. D. G., in the ebony
casket in the Hall of Mourning, in the house in the Rue Saint-Francois.

"'My father was also exposed to these secret persecutions. His ruin, and
perhaps his death, would have been the consequence, had it not been for
the intervention of an angelic woman, towards whom he felt an almost
religious veneration.

"'The portrait of this woman, whom I saw a few years ago, as well as
that of the man whom I hold in the greatest reverence, were painted
by me from memory, and have been placed in the Red Room in the Rue
Saint-Francois--to be gratefully valued, I hope, by the descendants of
my family.'"

For some moments Gabriel had become more and more attentive to the
reading of this testament. He thought within himself by how strange a
coincidence one of his ancestors had, two centuries before, broken with
the Society of Jesus, as he himself had just done; and that from this
rupture, two centuries old, dated also that species of hatred with which
the Society of Jesus had always pursued his family. Nor did the young
priest find it less strange that this inheritance, transmitted to him
after a lapse of a hundred and fifty years, from one of his kindred (the
victim of the Society of Jesus), should return by a voluntary act to the
coffers of this same society. When the notary read the passage relative
to the two portraits, Gabriel, who, like Father d'A