and love as the image of God upon
earth.

"'The faithful friend, who preserved for me the fifty thousand crowns,
the wreck of my fortune, knows the use I mean to make of them. I could
not refuse his friendship this mark of confidence. But I have concealed
from him the name of Isaac Samuel--for to have mentioned it might have
exposed this latter and his descendants to great dangers.

"'In a short time, this friend, who knows not that my resolution to die
is so near its accomplishment, will come hither with my notary. Into
their hands, after the usual formalities, I shall deliver my sealed
testament.

"'Such is my last will. I leave its execution to the superintending care
of Providence. God will protect the cause of love, peace, union, and
liberty.

"'This mystic testament,(20) having been freely made by me, and written
entirely with my own hand, I intend and will its scrupulous execution
both in spirit and the letter.

"'This 13th day of February, 1682, at one o'clock in the afternoon.

"'MARIUS DE RENNEPONT.'"

As the notary had proceeded with the reading of the testament, Gabriel
was successively agitated by divers painful impressions. At first, as
we have before said, he was struck with the singular fatality which
restored this immense fortune, derived from a victim of the Society of
Jesus, to the hands of that very association, by the renewal of his
deed of gift. Then, as his charitable and lofty soul began fully to
comprehend the admirable tendency of the association so earnestly
recommended by Marius de Rennepont, he reflected with bitter remorse,
that, in consequence of his act of renunciation, and of the absence of
any other heir, this great idea would never be realized, and a fortune,
far more considerable than had even been expected, would fall to
the share of an ill-omened society, in whose hands it would become a
terrible means of action. At the same time, it must be said that the
soul of Gabriel was too pure and noble to feel the slightest personal
regret, on hearing the great probable value of the property he had
renounced. He rejoiced rather in withdrawing his mind, by a touching
contrast, from the thought of the wealth he had abandoned, to the humble
parsonage, where he hoped to pass the remainder of his life, in the
practice of most evangelical virtue.

These ideas passed confusedly through his brain. The sight of that
woman's portrait, the dark revelations contained in the te