but we are
so often accused of meddling imprudently in family matters! Be sure that
my intervention here, without authority or right, would do you more harm
than good. It is for you and for those who love you," he added, giving a
look to Madame Thuillier, "to see if these arrangements, already so far
advanced, could be changed in the direction of your wishes."

It was written that the poor child was to drink to the dregs the cup she
had herself prepared by her intolerance. As the abbe finished speaking,
his housekeeper came in to ask if he would receive Monsieur Felix
Phellion. Thus, like the Charter of 1830, Madame de Godollo's officious
falsehood was turned into truth.

"Go this way," he said hastily, showing his two penitents out by a
private corridor.

Life has such strange encounters that it does sometimes happen that the
same form of proceeding must be used by courtesans and by the men of
God.

"Monsieur l'abbe," said Felix to the young vicar as soon as they met, "I
have heard of the kind manner in which you were so very good as to
speak of me in Monsieur Thuillier's salon last night, and I should have
hastened to express my gratitude if another interest had not drawn me to
you."

The Abbe Gondrin passed hastily over the compliments, eager to know in
what way he could be useful to his fellow-man.

"With an intention that I wish to think kindly," replied Felix, "you
were spoken to yesterday about the state of my soul. Those who read it
so fluently know more than I do about my inner being, for, during the
last few days I have felt strange, inexplicable feelings within me.
Never have I doubted God, but, in contact with that infinitude where he
has permitted my thought to follow the traces of his work I seem to have
gathered a sense of him less vague, more immediate; and this has led
me to ask myself whether an honest and upright life is the only homage
which his omnipotence expects of me. Nevertheless, there are numberless
objections rising in my mind against the worship of which you are the
minister; while sensible of the beauty of its external form in many of
its precepts and practices, I find myself deterred by my reason. I shall
have paid dearly, perhaps by the happiness of my whole life, for the
slowness and want of vigor which I have shown in seeking the solution of
my doubts. I have now decided to search to the bottom of them. No one
so well as you, Monsieur l'abbe, can help me to solve them. I have com