Father Bonneville agreed to the proposal, and we rode on by the side of our inviter in desultory conversation, pointed occasionally by references to passing political events, but generally referring to subjects altogether indifferent. I was dreadfully tired, I confess, before we got to the end of our long, slow journey. At length after two hours’ quiet ride, the stranger said, “We are coming to my home, where you will be very welcome, and it is as well for you to stay there to-night; for there is a grand fête of Liberty going on in most of the villages round, and that lady, like most other pagan deities, is very fond of human sacrifices. Now it does not much matter whether one is crushed under the wheels of Juggernaut, or burned by Druids in a basket of wicker-work, or made to pass through the fire like the children of those obedient and docile Israelites of old, or have one’s head chopped off on a little platform in a public square, before the image of a monstrous woman, in a red night-cap, and with a spear in her hand. It does not much matter, I say; but all are disagreeable, and all are to be avoided by every reasonable means. You will therefore be better in my home there, than in any inn in the neighborhood.” “Where?” asked Father Bonneville, gazing on before him, in expectation of seeing a farmer’s house. “There,” replied the stranger, pointing to a magnificent château upon a rising ground near. “You marvel, I see, and I can guess your inquiry—how I have contrived to keep possession of my own, when the universal war-cry through all France is, ‘War to the Castle, Peace to the Cottage.’ I have not time for long explanation; but sufficient may be told briefly. You see this coat of coarse gray cloth. It is the sign, the key, of my whole life. I too was bred an ecclesiastic. The death of three elder brothers put me in possession of that thing upon the hill. I have unfrocked myself, but I retain my early habits, and respect my voluntary vows. I remain in two or three little chambers, while very often boors revel in the halls of my ancestors. But they have a shrewd notion that if I were gone they would not have the means of revelry to as great an extent as at present—that if my property was confiscated, it would fall into the hands of worse men than myself; and so long as I, the master of it, act but as the steward of it, they are well contented to leave me alone in my office without bringing my head to the guillotine, which would be of no use at all to any one, and without seizing upon my lands, it would be a great embarrassment to themselves. Moreover, I have once or twice threatened to resign all my possessions into the hands of the Commune, and the very lowest of the people have been those to beseech me the most earnestly to refrain, knowing very well that they get a better part of the spoil now than they otherwise would. Thus I have got a certain command over them, and I do what I like