The Marquis said nothing, but when they got outside he began suddenly: “I saw a thing in Brittany which struck me very much. When I was at Mauron there was a riot in the church, in which several lives were lost. In the midst of the turmoil a man, a young man—I learnt afterwards that he was a noble—sprang up the altar steps and stood with drawn sword in front of the tabernacle. It was a fearfully conspicuous position, and he was shot down by a soldier from the end of the church. The instant that he fell a peasant took his place, snatching the sword from his hand. I think it was the finest thing I have ever seen.” “I agree with you,” said the priest, his face shining. “Yet your own countrymen might show you a devotion as lofty. Do you remember the sublime retort of the dying peasant in the troubles at Saint Christophe eighteen months ago, when the soldier shouted to him, ‘_Rends-toi!_’ ‘_Rends-moi mon Dieu!_’” “Yes, I heard of it,” said the Marquis, and fell silent. M. des Graves went to his room. He had by now given up trying to penetrate the mystery of Gilbert’s relations with Louis. It was evident that in Château-Foix’ mind there was no room at once for the resentment which the priest had feared and the new interests and enthusiasms whose presence he welcomed with ever-increasing surprise. The Marquis seemed a different man—a man who was at last perhaps in a fair way to be able to use his own dormant qualities. And then . . . was this the prelude to a still greater change? The priest flung himself down before his prie-dieu. Oh, if what Gilbert had said this morning only meant that his eyes were opening at last to the greatest motive power of human life, he would not grudge these years of anguish in which he had been forced to watch the dying, as it seemed, of early faith and early enthusiasms in the man whom he had loved more than a son. He would not grudge his own retirement during these long twenty years, his voluntary serving of a simple and credulous people, the despair which had threatened sometimes to overwhelm him. He would be a thousand-fold repaid. But gradually, as the weeks wore on to Christmas, the priest’s hope in this respect died out. Yet his conviction of a change in Gilbert had become certainty. The Marquis’ moderation was gone; he was filled with a restless zeal for a cause on which, before his journey to Paris, he had looked almost as a spectator. Not Louis himself was more enraged at the imprisonment of the Royal Family, more horror-struck at the King’s trial. At last the supreme shock of the 21st of January hurried matters to a crisis.