creatures perished of fatigue, hunger, and cold, or were
killed by villagers. The episcopal palace re-echoed with the complaints
of the priesthood and the lamentations of mothers.

The pious Bishop Nicolas sent for the originator of these disorders.
With extreme mildness, and infinite sadness, he reproached him for
having misused the Word for the misleading of souls, and reminded him
that God had not picked him out of the salting-tub in order that he
should attack the property of our Holy Mother, the Church.

"Consider, my son," he said, "the greatness of your offence. You appear
before your pastor charged with turmoil, sedition, and murder."

But young Sulpice, maintaining a horrid calm, answered with a voice full
of assurance, that he had not sinned, neither had he offended God; but,
on the contrary, he had acted in accordance with the bidding of Heaven,
for the good of the Church. And he professed before the dismayed Bishop
the false doctrines of the Manicheans, the Arians, the Nestorians, the
Sabellians, the Vaudois, the Albigenses, and the Begards. So eager
was he to embrace these monstrous errors that he did not see how they
contradicted one another, and were mutually devoured in the bosom that
cherished and revived them.

The pious Bishop endeavoured to lead Sulpice back into the right path,
but he failed to overcome the unhappy lad's obstinacy.

Having dismissed him, he knelt and prayed.

"I thank thee, O Lord, for having sent me this young man, as a whetstone
on which to sharpen my patience and my charity."

While two of the children he had rescued from the salting-tub were
causing him so much pain, St. Nicolas was obtaining some consolation
from the third. Robin showed himself neither violent in his actions nor
arrogant in his thoughts. He had not the sturdy, ruddy appearance of
Maxime; nor the grave, audacious manner of Sulpice. Small, thin, yellow,
lined, and shrunken, of humble, obsequious and reverential bearing, he
devoted himself to assisting the Bishop and clergy, helping the clerks
to keep the accounts of the episcopal revenues, and making complicated
calculations with the assistance of balls threaded on rods; he even
multiplied and divided numbers in his head, without the use of slate or
pencil, with a rapidity and accuracy that would have been admired even
in a past master of money and finance. For him it was a pleasure to keep
the books of the Deacon Modernus, who, growing old, used to muddle