olis to Madame Claes on
the occasion of his examining the pictures, there happened certain of
those imperceptible events which wield so great an influence upon life;
and their results were sufficiently important to necessitate a brief
sketch of the two personages now first introduced into the history of
this family.

It was a matter of principle with Madame Claes to perform the duties
of her religion privately. Her confessor, who was almost unknown in the
family, now entered the house for the second time only; but there, as
elsewhere, every one was impressed with a sort of tender admiration at
the aspect of the uncle and his nephew.

The Abbe de Solis was an octogenarian, with silvery hair, and a withered
face from which the vitality seemed to have retreated to the eyes.
He walked with difficulty, for one of his shrunken legs ended in a
painfully deformed foot, which was cased in a species of velvet bag, and
obliged him to use a crutch when the arm of his nephew was not at hand.
His bent figure and decrepit body conveyed the impression of a delicate,
suffering nature, governed by a will of iron and the spirit of religious
purity. This Spanish priest, who was remarkable for his vast learning,
his sincere piety, and a wide knowledge of men and things, had been
successively a Dominican friar, the "grand penitencier" of Toledo,
and the vicar-general of the archbishopric of Malines. If the French
Revolution had not intervened, the influence of the Casa-Real family
would have made him one of the highest dignitaries of the Church;
but the grief he felt for the death of the young duke, Madame Claes's
brother, who had been his pupil, turned him from active life, and he now
devoted himself to the education of his nephew, who was made an orphan
at an early age.

After the conquest of Belgium, the Abbe de Solis settled at Douai to be
near Madame Claes. From his youth up he had professed an enthusiasm for
Saint Theresa which, together with the natural bent of his mind, led
him to the mystical time of Christianity. Finding in Flanders, where
Mademoiselle Bourignon and the writings of the Quietists and Illuminati
made the greatest number of proselytes, a flock of Catholics devoted to
those ideas, he remained there,--all the more willingly because he
was looked up to as a patriarch by this particular communion, which
continued to follow the doctrines of the Mystics notwithstanding the
censures of the Church upon Fenelon and Madame G