ungrateful, wicked, succeeded in rendering his despair
incurable. Having attained this object, the Jesuit took another step.
Knowing Hardy's admirable goodness of heart, and profiting by the
weakened state of his mind, he spoke to him of the consolation to be
derived by a man overwhelmed with sorrow, from the belief that every one
of his tears, instead of being unfruitful, was in fact agreeable to God,
and might aid in the salvation of souls--the belief, as the reverend
father adroitly added, that by faith alone can sorrow be made useful to
humanity, and acceptable to Divinity.

Whatever impiety, whatever atrocious Machiavelism there was in these
detestable maxims, which make of a loving-kind Deity a being delighted
with the tears of his creatures, was thus skillfully concealed from
Hardy's eyes, whose generous instincts were still alive. Soon did this
loving and tender soul, whom unworthy priests were driving to a sort of
moral suicide, find a mournful charm in the fiction, that his sorrows
would at least be profitable to other men. It was at first only a
fiction; but the enfeebled mind which takes pleasure in such a fable,
finishes by receiving it as a reality, and by degrees will submit to the
consequences. Such was Hardy's moral and physical state, when, by means
of a servant who had been bought over, he received from Agricola Baudoin
a letter requesting an interview. Alone, the workman could not have
broken the band of the Jesuit's pleadings, but he was accompanied by
Gabriel, whose eloquence and reasonings were of a most convincing nature
to a spirit like Hardy's.

It is unnecessary to point out to the reader, with what dignified
reserve Gabriel had confined himself to the most generous means of
rescuing Hardy from the deadly influence of the reverend fathers. It
was repugnant to the great soul of the young missionary, to stoop to
a revelation of the odious plots of these priests. He would only have
taken this extreme course, had his powerful and sympathetic words have
failed to have any effect on Hardy's blindness. About a quarter of an
hour had elapsed since Gabriel's departure, when the servant appointed
to wait on this boarder of the reverend fathers entered and delivered to
him a letter.

"From whom is this?" asked Hardy.

"From a boarder in the house, sir," answered the servant bowing.

This man had a crafty hypocritical face; he wore his hair combed over
his forehead, spoke in a low voice, and always