His agony of mind was too apparent on his face. Even Malletort felt a momentary compunction when he remembered the hopeful enthusiastic youth who had sat with him under the limes at Versailles all those years ago; when he remembered the desperate career on which he had embarked, his insubordination, his apostasy, and those paroxysms of remorse that drove him back into the bosom of the church. Could this depressed and miserable penitent be the once bright and happy Florian de St. Croix? and had he been brought to this pass simply because he possessed such inconvenient superfluities as a heart and a conscience? Malletort, I say, felt a twinge of compunction, but of pity very little, of indecision, not one bit. “Would you go to a doctor,” said he, gravely, “and teach him how to cure you of a deadly malady? Would you choose your own medicine, my son, and refuse the only healing draught prescribed, because it was bitter to the taste? There is but one way of retracing your steps. You must go back along the very path that led you into evil. That the effort will be trying, I admit. All uphill work is trying to the utmost, but how else can men attain the summit? That the task is painful I allow, but were it pleasant, where would be the penance? Besides, you know our rules, my son, the time is not far off when I shall be permitted to say, my brother. We have got you. Will you dare to hesitate ere you obey?” An expression of intense fear came over Florian’s face, but it seemed less the physical fear of danger from without than an absorbing dread of the moral enemy within. “I _must_ obey,” he answered in a low voice, shuddering while he spoke. “I _must_ obey, I know, readily, willingly. Alas! Malletort, there is my unforgiven sin, my mortal peril. _Too_ willingly do I undertake the task. It is my dearest wish to find myself addressed to it—that is why I entreat not to be sent—that is why I implore them to spare me. It is my soul that is in danger. Heart, hope, happiness, home, liberty, identity, are all gone from me, and now I shall lose my soul.”