reason
of this? It is because, growing in a rich, moist soil, quiet and secure
in the wealth which sustains its life, it has utilized all the juices
of the earth to augment its power and its glory, and being too strong
to dream of arming against its feeble enemies, it has devoted itself
entirely to the joys of its magnificent and delicious fertility. Now
come a few steps up this rising path, and look at this other hawthorn,
which having with difficulty issued from a dry, stony soil, languishes,
deficient in both wood and leaves, and has had no other thought during
its hard life than to defend itself against the innumerable enemies that
threaten the weal. It is nothing but a bundle of thorns. It has employed
the little sap which it received in fashioning innumerable spears, broad
at the base, hard and sharp, which but ill restore confidence to
its apprehensive weakness. It has nothing left over for fruitful and
fragrant blossom. My friends, we are like the hawthorns. The care given
to our childhood makes us better. Too harsh an up bringing hardens us."

CHAPTER III

WHEN Maxime was approaching his seventeenth year he filled the holy
Bishop Nicolas with grief and the diocese with scandal by forming and
training a company of rogues of his own age, with a view to kidnapping
the girls of a village called Grosses-Nates, situated at a distance
of four leagues from Trinqueballe. The expedition was marvellously
successful. The ravishers entered the village by night, clasping to
their bosoms the dishevelled virgins, who vainly uplifted to heaven
their burning eyes and imploring hands. But when the fathers, brothers,
and betrothed of these ravished maidens sought them out, they refused to
return to the place of their birth, alleging that they felt too deeply
shamed, and preferred to hide their dishonour in _the_ arms that
had caused it. Maxime, who, for his share, had taken the three most
beautiful, was living in their company in a little manor dependent upon
the episcopal See. In the absence of their ravisher, the Deacon Modernus
arrived, by order of the Bishop, to knock at their door, answering that
he came to set them free. They refused to open; and when he represented
to them the abomination of their lives they dropped upon his head
a crockful of dishwater, with the crock, by which his skull was
fractured.

Armed with a gentle severity, the holy Bishop reproached Maxime for this
violence and disorder:

"Alas," he s