“No one will read it if you do,” was the reply. “You must leave all to time. At present, for you to be accused is to be condemned. Who was it--Montesquieu?--who says, ‘If you are accused of having stolen the towers of Notre Dame, bolt at once’? That is your case. Whatever they may charge you with, consider yourself convicted.” They had by this time reached the priest’s house, a little cottage close to the corner of the two streets. Mr. Yorke declining an invitation to enter, they leaned on the gate a few minutes to finish their talk. “You must not judge our country by what you see here,” Mr. Yorke said. “What you complain of is merely the abuse of a good gift. A priest of your church has expressed himself very well concerning these difficulties. ‘It always pains me, in such periods,’ he says, ‘to hear men express doubt concerning our institutions. As for me, I would rather suffer from the license of freedom than the oppression of authority. War is better than a false peace; riot better than servitude; heresy better than indifference. But none of these things,’ he adds, ‘is to my liking. And may the good God preserve us from them all!’ That was Father John, an American priest.” “Ah! I know him,” Father Rasle said brightly. “I happened to travel once in his company. We were in a steamboat, and some minister entered into controversy with him. Catholic Christianity degrades the man, the minister said. The Catholic cannot hold any communication with God. If he should be cast away on a desert island, he would be without God. All must come to him through the church. He has in himself no power to reflect the divine motions. ‘You mistake,’ says Father John; ‘and I can show by a familiar figure; Suppose that every man in the world should insist that his timepiece was correct, and should refuse to regulate it by any other. Of course, the chronometers would all wag their several ways, no two alike, and there would be a ceaseless wrangling as to what was the time of day, and every man would think that he carried the sun in his pocket. To the dogs with the meridian and the almanac! my watch is right! That is Protestantism. Now, the Catholic has his spiritual dial also; but since he knows that it is a fallible instrument, he keeps it regulated by the great clock of the church. The consequence is truth and harmony. Every Catholic conscience ticks alike; and, when the meridian-gun of the great regulator is fired, every man says, ‘It’s twelve o’clock. Amen!’” Mr. Yorke’s warning was well-timed, for the event proved that Father Rasle would scarcely have been allowed to leave the town without molestation had it been known that he was going. No one knew it, however, but the priest’s housekeeper, Mr. Yorke, and the man who drove him over to Brayon that night.