and the peasants believed he knew words to dispel
charms. He laid his hands on cows that gave thin milk, discovered the
whereabouts of things which had been lost by means of a mysterious
incantation, and devoted his narrow mind to the study of all the
ecclesiastical books in which he could find accounts of the devil's
apparitions upon earth, or descriptions of his resources and stratagems,
and the various ways in which he manifested his power and exercised his
influence.

Believing himself specially called to combat this invisible, harmful
Power, the priest had learnt all the forms given in religious manuals to
exorcise the devil. He fancied Satan lurked in every shadow, and the
phrase _Sieut leo rugiens circuit, quaerens quem devoret_ was continually
on his lips. People began to be afraid of his strange power; even his
fellow-clergy (ignorant country priests to whom Beelzebub was an article
of their faith, and who, perplexed by the minute directions for the
rites to be observed in case of any manifestations of the Evil One's
power, at last confounded religion with magic) regarded the Abbe Tolbiac
as somewhat of a wizard, and respected him as much for the supernatural
power he was supposed to possess as for the irreproachable austerity of
his life.

The cure never bowed to Jeanne if he chanced to meet her, and such a
state of things worried and grieved Aunt Lison, who could not understand
how anyone could systematically stay away from church. Everyone took it
for granted that she was religious and confessed and communicated at
proper intervals, and no one ever tried to find out what her views on
religion really were. Whenever she was quite alone with Paul, Lison
talked to him, in whispers, about the good God. The child listened to
her with a faint degree of interest when she related the miracles which
had been performed in the old times, and, when she told him he must love
the good God, very, very dearly, he sometimes asked:

"Where is he, auntie?"

She would point upwards and answer: "Up there, above the sky, Poulet;
but you must not say anything about it," for she feared the baron would
be angry if he knew what she was teaching the boy. One day, however,
Poulet startled her by asserting: "The good God is everywhere except in
church," and she found he had been talking to his grandfather about what
she had told him.

Paul was now ten years old; his mother looked forty. He was strong,
noisy, and boldly climbed the