f it. I had no conception of
hypocrisy in this forbearance, or thought of changing my religion, nay,
so far was the idea from being familiar to me, that I looked on it with a
degree of horror which seemed to exclude the possibility of such an
event; I only wished to avoid giving offence to those I was sensible
caressed me from that motive; I wished to cultivate their good opinion,
and meantime leave them the hope of success by seeming less on my guard
than I really was. My conduct in this particular resembled the coquetry
of some very honest women, who, to obtain their wishes, without
permitting or promising anything, sometimes encourage hopes they never
mean to realize.

Reason, piety, and love of order, certainly demanded that instead of
being encouraged in my folly, I should have been dissuaded from the ruin
I was courting, and sent back to my family; and this conduct any one that
was actuated by genuine virtue would have pursued; but it should be
observed that though M. de Pontverre was a religious man, he was not a
virtuous one, but a bigot, who knew no virtue except worshipping images
and telling his beads, in a word, a kind of missionary, who thought the
height of merit consisted in writing libels against the ministers of
Geneva. Far from wishing to send me back, he endeavored to favor my
escape, and put it out of my power to return even had I been so disposed.
It was a thousand to one but he was sending me to perish with hunger, or
become a villain; but all this was foreign to his purpose; he saw a soul
snatched from heresy, and restored to the bosom of the church: whether I
was an honest man or a knave was very immaterial, provided I went to
mass.

This ridiculous mode of thinking is not peculiar to Catholics; it is the
voice of every dogmatical persuasion where merit consists in belief, and
not in virtue.

"You are called by the Almighty," said M. de Pontverre; "go to Annecy,
where you will find a good and charitable lady, whom the bounty of the
king enables to turn souls from those errors she has happily renounced."
He spoke of a Madam de Warrens, a new convert, to whom the priests
contrived to send those wretches who were disposed to sell their faith,
and with these she was in a manner constrained to share a pension of two
thousand francs bestowed on her by the King of Sardinia. I felt myself
extremely humiliated at being supposed to want the assistance of a good
and charitable lady. I had no objecti