at had passed, and
if it had not been too late, he would have sent for Mericour from Lady
Burnet's; but his own story did almost as well in bringing back Lucy's
soft pink color. She crept up into Cecily's room one day, and found that
she knew all about it, and was as kind and sympathizing as she could
be--when a vocation had been given up, though no vows had been taken.
She did not quite understand it, but she would take it on trust.

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE SCANDAL OF THE SYNOD OF MONTAUBAN

O ye, wha are sae guid yourself,
Sae pious and sae holy,
Ye've naught to do but mark and tell
Your neebour's fauts and folly.
--BURNS

The old city of Montauban, once famous as the home of Ariosto's Rinaldo
and his brethren, known to French romance as '_Les Quatre Fils Aymon_,'
acquired in later times a very diverse species of fame,--that, namely,
of being one of the chief strong-holds of the Reformed. The Bishop Jean
de Lettes, after leading a scandalous life, had professed a sort of
Calvinism, had married, and retired to Geneva, and his successor had
not found it possible to live at Montauban from the enmity of the
inhabitants. Strongly situated, with a peculiar municipal constitution
of its own, and used to Provencal independence both of thought and
deed, the inhabitants had been so unanimous in their Calvinism, and
had offered such efficient resistance, as to have wrung from Government
reluctant sanction for the open observance of the Reformed worship, and
for the maintenance of a college for the education of their ministry.

There then was convoked the National Synod, answering to the Scottish
General Assembly, excepting that the persecuted French Presbyterians met
in a different place every year. Delegated pastors there gathered from
every quarter. From Northern France came men used to live in constant
hazard of their lives; from Paris, confessors such as Merlin, the
chaplain who, leaving Coligny's bedside, had been hidden for three days
in a hayloft, feeding on the eggs that a hen daily laid beside him;
army-chaplains were there who had passionately led battle-psalms ere
their colleagues charged the foe, and had striven with vain endeavours
to render their soldiers saints; while other pastors came from Pyrenean
villages where their generation had never seen flames lighted against
heresy, nor knew what it was to disperse a congregation in haste and
secrecy for hea