While the conversation just narrated was taking place, and the character and views of the Abbé de Boisguerin were being commented upon in a manner which he could but little have wished, he himself was pursuing his way towards the town of Augoulême, with feelings and purposes varying at every step; though in his case it was not the slightest sting of remorse or regret which occasioned this vacillation of purpose. Probably there never was a man on earth who wholly and entirely stilled the voice of conscience, and there might be moments when the Abbé's own heart reproached him for things which he had done. But the habit of his thoughts was different. He had been brought up in a school where right and wrong were so frequently confounded for the purpose of maintaining the temporal dominion of the church that, at a very early period of his life, he had arrived at that conclusion, which the sceptical followers of Pyrrho arrive at by a more lengthened process, namely, that on earth there is no absolute and invariable right and wrong. The Jesuits had taught him, that what was wrong under some circumstances, and marked by the reprobation both of God and man, was right under other circumstances, and even praiseworthy; and forgetting the cautious restrictions under which the wiser and the better members of the order attempted, though vainly, to guard the doctrine, his keen and clear mind at once determined, that if fraud could ever be pious, virtue of any kind could be but a name. If there were no invariable and universal standard: if his thoughts and his actions were to be governed by the opinions, and directed to the purposes of men, the only rule of virtue, he saw, must be the approbation of others like himself; and as every course of action must have an end and object to secure energy in pursuing it, he readily fell into the belief that gratification was the great object, and men's good opinion but to be sought as a means to that end. It may be easily conceived how far he went on upon such a course of reasoning. It naturally ended in the disbelief of every thing that other men hold sacred: yet he put on all the semblances of religion; for as he believed in no hereafter, to do so, did not seem to him an impious mockery, but merely an unmeaning ceremony required by society. Every thing had become with him a matter of calculation; any thing that was to be obtained, was to be obtained by a certain price; and, as he himself declared, he never regretted giving any price, provided the object was attained, and was of equal value. It was his passions alone that led him wrong, and made him calculate falsely. They had done so more than once in life, but yet not frequently; not indeed that he sought to subdue them, but that they were not naturally easily roused.