As a matter of fact, the priest was not acutely conscious of the elements. It was another storm which he had been contemplating, and one not yet broken. Of the three principal inmates of the château M. des Graves had, very naturally, lent the most sensitive ear during the last few days to its mutterings. For he saw quite clearly that the long-expected crisis was on them at last, and he did not shrink before it. An observer would have said that it had revivified in him some older self, had conjured up, out of its long sleep, the ghost of a man who once had—who still had—all the aptitudes of command. Yes, he could not doubt it: the moment was approaching. And all those long two-and-twenty years spent in this obscure corner of Vendée seemed to have been but a preparation for it; and so, too, seemed the lives of the two men with whom his own existence was so intimately united. How would the emergency find them? One was out there in the gale, riding in peril of his life, with bitter hatred in his heart. It was on just such another March afternoon that he had first entered the house—a little bright-haired child who had so easily won their hearts, a child for whom happiness seemed a birthright. . . . Poor Louis! And what of the other boy who had so often sat with his lesson books in this room, at whose feet Fate was about to fling a rôle of which he might make something great and noble . . . if he could take it up. For a man worthily to lead a religious war he must be more than a great soldier, more than a natural leader, he must be a saint. And Gilbert? Another critic would have urged to himself that the Marquis’ private life was stainless, his dealings with his dependents marked by invariable uprightness and generosity, his ability as a soldier, though untried in actual practice, guaranteed to a large degree by his brilliant studies and by his marked capacity for organisation. M. des Graves did not cast a thought on these things; there was something deeper than all these which was lacking. The peasantry among whom Château-Foix lived, simply and without ostentation, and to whose interests he had sacrificed his own, respected, admired, perhaps a little feared him, but they did not love him. Did they, too, feel that coldness, that intense moderation, that lack of enthusiasm which had made of his existence, until lately, but half a life? Did they know—they must know—what barrenness of soul was covered by his minimum of religious observance? If they were ignorant of it now, they would learn it all too soon, and the men ready to die for their altars would find that their leader knew little of the inspiration which was theirs. The pity of it! The pity . . . yes, and whose was the blame?