is not dead, nor perhaps Antony Mauprat either; and my
surprise is less than yours only because I have already met one of these
two ghosts. That he has become a monk, and is repenting for his sins,
is very possible; but alas! it is by no means impossible that he has
disguised himself in order to carry out some evil design, and I advise
you to be on your guard."

The abbe was so frightened that he no longer wanted to keep his
appointment. I suggested that it would be well to learn what the old
sinner was aiming at. But, as I knew the abbe's weak character, and
feared that my Uncle John would manage to win his heart by his lying
confessions and wheedle him into some false step, I made up my mind to
hide in a thicket whence I could see and hear everything.

But things did not happen as I had expected. The Trappist, instead of
playing the politician, immediately made known his real name to the
abbe. He declared that he was full of contrition, and that, as his
conscience would not allow him to make the monk's habit a refuge from
punishment (he had really been a Trappist for several years), he was
about to put himself into the hands of justice, that he might atone in
a striking way for the crimes with which he was polluted. This man,
endowed as he was with conspicuous abilities, had acquired a
mystic eloquence in the cloister. He spoke with so much grace and
persuasiveness that I was fascinated no less than the abbe. It was in
vain that the latter attempted to combat a resolution which appeared
to him insane; John Mauprat showed the most unflinching devotion to his
religious ideas. He declared that, having committed the crimes of the
old barbarous paganism, he could not ransom his soul save by a public
expiation worthy of the early Christians.

"It is possible," he said, "to be a coward with God as well as with man,
and in the silence of my vigils I hear a terrible voice answering to my
tears: 'Miserable craven, it is the fear of man that has thrown you upon
the bosom of God, and if you had not feared temporal death, you would
never have thought of life eternal!'

"Then I realize that what I most dread is not God's wrath, but the rope
and the hangman that await me among my fellows. Well, it is time to end
this sense of secret shame; not until the day when men crush me beneath
their abuse and punishment shall I fell absolved and restored in the
sight of Heaven; then only shall I account myself worthy to say to Jesus
my Sa