The only remaining difficulty was to get away from the great house. Dreading the outcry that he knew would follow the announcement of his resolution, and the arguments that would be used against him, Vincent departed, declaring simply that personal affairs called him away from Paris. Only when he had been already established for some time in his new parish did it dawn on the de Gondis that his absence was not to be merely temporary. They were in desperation. Madame de Gondi did nothing but weep, while her husband applied to everyone whom he thought to have any influence with Vincent to persuade him to return. "If he has not the gift of teaching children," he wrote to a friend, "it does not matter; he shall have a tutor to work under him. He shall live exactly as he likes if he will only come back. Get de Berulle to persuade him. I shall be a good man some day," ends this great nobleman pathetically, "if only he will stay with me." Chapter 4 THE GALLEYS M. DE BERULLE had certainly not exaggerated matters when he said that the parish of Chatillon-les-Dombes was in need of earnest workers. Vincent looked about him and set to work at once. The first thing to be done was to clean out the church, which was in such a state of dirt and squalor that people had some excuse for not wishing to enter it. He then turned his attention to the clergy already there. They were ignorant and easygoing men, for the most part, who thought a good deal more of their own amusement than of the needs of their flock, but they were not bad at heart. Vincent's representations of what a priest's life ought to be astonished them at first and convinced them later--all the more so in that they saw in him the very ideal that he strove to set before them. There was no presbytery at Chatillon, and to the astonishment of everyone, Vincent hired a lodging in the house of a young gentleman who had the reputation of being one of the most riotous livers in the town. He was, moreover, half a heretic, and Vincent had been warned to have nothing to do with him. But the new rector had his own ideas on the subject, and the ill-assorted pair soon became very good friends. The change in the young man's mode of life was gradual. His first step was to be reconciled to the Church, his second to begin to interest himself in the poor. Gradually his bad companions dropped away, until one day Chatillon suddenly awoke to the fact that this most rackety of individuals was taking life seriously--was, in fact, a changed man. The whole town was in a stir. Who was this priest who had so suddenly come among them, so self-forgetful, so simple, so unassuming, yet whose influence was so strong with all classes? It was a question that might well be asked in the light of what was yet to come.