“My dear Louis,” he said, with a calm but very grave face, “we have heard very evil news. A persecution is raging against the ministers of religion, which must soon reach me if I remain here. They have already commenced in a town not very far distant, a practice of tying priests and nuns together, and drowning them in the river, adding, by the term they apply to these massacres, impiety to murder. This good creature and Sister Clara, who has just been here, both urge me strongly to fly. I should have hesitated to take such a step, but I find that it is necessary that you should be removed to another country as soon as possible. I have no one to send with you, and I trust I am not biased from my duty by any mere fears for my own life when I determine to accompany you myself. I shall still be fulfilling at least one of the tasks which I have undertaken to perform, and I sincerely believe it is the one in which the remains of my life can be most serviceable.” He then went on to explain to me that he had determined to pass the next day in the town, and to make his escape at night. Disguise, he added with a sigh, would be necessary. But good Jeanette undertook to procure what was fitting for the occasion, and good Father Bonneville retired to rest that night grave and sad, but, apparently, in no degree agitated. On the following day, a few minutes before noon, a great mob passed up the street, carrying a bloody human head upon a pole. They stopped opposite to the good priest’s house, shouting for him to show himself, and with a quiet and undismayed air he walked to an upper window, and looked out. He was instantly assailed with a torrent of abuse, and I do not feel at all sure that the mob would not have sacked the house and put him to death, if it had not been so near the tiger’s feeding-time. All the lower classes dined at twelve, and Father Bonneville retiring from the window as soon as he had shown himself, the crowd marched on again down the street with their bloody ensign at their head. Nothing that I remember worthy of notice occurred during the rest of the day, though Jeanette was in a good deal of bustle, and went in and out more than once. Several persons came to see Father Bonneville, and talked with him for some time; but the day passed heavily with me, although I will acknowledge that I felt a good deal of that eager and pleasant expectation with which youth always looks forward to change.