tnership, which he now held. Of course he had not lived there those
seven or eight years last past without his visit to Paris; and his easy,
careless way of describing what he had seen there in Napoleon's day--the
fetes, the processions, the display--was a kind of talk not often heard
in a New England village, and which took a strong hold upon the
imagination of Rachel.

"And to think," says the parson, "that such a people are wholly
infidel!"

"Well, well, I don't know," says Maverick; "I think I have seen a good
deal of faith in the Popish churches."

"Faith in images; faith in the Virgin; faith in mummery," says Johns,
with a sigh. "'Tis always the scarlet woman of Babylon!"

"I know," says Maverick, smiling, "these things are not much to your
taste; but we have our Protestant chapels, too."

"Not much better, I fear," says Johns. "They are sadly impregnated with
the Genevese Socinianism."

This was about the time that the orthodox Louis Empaytaz was suffering
the rebuke of the Swiss church authorities for his "Considerations upon
the Divinity of Jesus Christ." Aside from this, all the parson's notions
of French religion and of French philosophy were of the most aggravated
degree of bitterness. That set of Voltaire, which the Major, his father,
had once purchased, had not been without its fruit,--not legitimate,
indeed, but most decided. The books so cautiously put out of sight--like
all such--had caught the attention of the son; whereupon his mother had
given him so terrible an account of French infidelity, and such a
fearful story of Voltaire's dying remorse,--current in orthodox
circles,--as had caught strong hold upon the mind of the boy. All
Frenchmen he had learned to look upon as the children of Satan, and
their language as the language of hell. With these sentiments very
sincerely entertained, he regarded his poor friend as one living at the
very door-posts of Pandemonium, and hoped, by God's mercy, to throw
around him even now a little of the protecting grace which should keep
him from utter destruction. But though this was uppermost in his mind,
it did not forbid a grateful outflow of his old sympathies and
expressions of interest in all that concerned his friend. It seemed to
him that his easy refinement of manner, in such contrast with the
ceremonious stiffness of the New England customs of speech, was but the
sliming over of the Serpent's tongue, preparatory to a dreadful
swallowing of soul and bo