It was the first step of purely local persecution. The municipality of Chantonnay, the little town in whose district lay the village of Chantemerle, had been very slow indeed to take any anti-clerical action. No “constitutional” priest had ever been installed at Chantemerle, and M. des Graves was accustomed to proceed with his ministrations as calmly as though he were ignorant of what was hanging over his head. But he knew well enough—and his flock, too—that he was a favoured exception. His parish was like a little island which the encroaching tide is bound in the end to submerge. Neither château nor village had yet recovered from the horror with which they had heard of Vergniaud’s proposal in the Assembly on May 27th for the deportation of priests to foreign parts, when orders came from Fontenay that all non-jurors not born in the department were to leave it at once. And M. des Graves was not a Vendean born. Yet, though the thunderbolt had fallen in the first week of June, on this, the 25th of the same month, the Curé had said his Mass as usual in the little church, had visited his parishioners, and was now pacing sedately up and down with the master of the Château, who, as a noble, was only a shade less obnoxious to the Jacobin Directory than himself. The explanation lay in the priest’s resolution, and in the fact that Fontenay-le-Comte, the _chef-lieu_, was a good deal further away than Chantonnay. The municipality had not moved. Neither had M. des Graves. On all these things did Madame de Château-Foix reflect as she watched the two figures. She did not allow herself to dwell on what would happen if M. des Graves were actually turned out of his cure. The prospect was too terrible. It had naturally been discussed ere this, and she knew that Gilbert was determined to shelter the priest, as long as possible, in the château itself, turning the chapel into a resort for the villagers, as had been done the previous September, with temporary success, at Saint-Mars-la-Réorthe. To have the Curé permanently in the house would not be so great a change after all.