a test, insisted
on his making one of a party who were about to break up and destroy a
Huguenot assembly. Unable, in his present mood, to endure the thought
of further cruelty, the young Abbe fled, gave secret warning to the
endangered congregation, and hastened to the old castle in Brittany,
where he had been brought up, to pour out his perplexities, and seek the
counsel of the good old chaplain who had educated him. Whether the kind,
learned, simple-hearted tutor could have settled his mind, he had no
time to discover, for he had scarcely unfolded his troubles before
warnings came down that he had better secure himself--his brother, as
head of the family, had obtained the royal assent to the imprisonment of
the rebellious junior, so as to bring him to a better mind, and cure
him of the Huguenot inclinations, which in the poor lad were simply
undeveloped. But in all the Catholic eyes he was a tainted man, and
his almost inevitable course was to take refuge with some Huguenot
relations. There he was eagerly welcome; instruction was poured in on
him; but as he showed a disposition to inquire and examine, and needed
time to look into what they taught him, as one who feared to break
his link with the Church, and still longed to find her blameless and
glorious, the righteous nation that keepeth the truth, they turned on
him and regarded him as a traitor and a spy, who had come among them on
false pretences.

All the poor lad wanted was time to think, time to examine, time to
consult authorities, living and dead. The Catholics called this treason
to the Church, the Huguenots called it halting between two opinions; and
between them he was a proscribed, distrusted vagabond, branded on one
side as a recreant, and on the other as a traitor. He had asked for a
few months of quiet, and where could they be had? His grand-mother had
been the daughter of a Scottish nobleman in the French service, and he
had once seen a nephew of hers who had come to Paris during the time of
Queen Mary's residence there. He imagined that if he were once out of
this distracted land of France, he might find respite for study, for
which he longed; and utterly ignorant of the real state of Scotland,
he had determined to make his way to his kindred there; and he had
struggled on the way to La Rochelle, cheated out of the small remains
of his money, selling his last jewels and all the clothing that was
not indispensable, and becoming so utterly unable to p