"They have already arrested the wife and sister of the Duke de Bouillon," said the Confessor; "and Monsieur de Villardin thinks that if they imprison women as a sort of surety for their relatives, they may equally well imprison children. He has prevailed upon me," added the good Priest, "to go to Virmont also, and to superintend the education of his daughter, though God knows I have every inducement to stay in this province, and no worldly motive has ever been able to make me quit it hitherto. Here I was born," he continued, musing: "here are all the associations of my infancy and of my age; nor did I think to leave it, though the Duke has frequently asked me. But I have now yielded to another voice more persuasive than his." "Indeed!" I said, in some surprise; and he instantly added, more in answer to my look than to the exclamation,--"The voice of my own heart, my son." The conversation then rambled on in a desultory manner; and the worthy Father, ere we parted, gave me an infinity of good advice, which, of course, I was the more willing to take, because he put it less in the dogmatical form of directions in regard to my own conduct, than under the semblance of the results of his own experience and general observations upon man and the world. He exacted from me a promise, also, that I would write to him continually, giving him not only an account of the general events in which I was about to mingle, but also detailing my own actions, thoughts, and feelings, as far as it was wise and prudent to do so by the insecure conveyance of the post. "In your letters to me, my son," he added, "you cannot be too minute; for, believe me, everything that concerns you, your health, your welfare, the progress of your mind, and the success of your fortunes, are all a matter of interest to me in no slight degree." He has acknowledged to me since, that his chief motive, in exacting from me this promise, was not so much the desire of watching over my conduct himself, as the wish to add a sort of safeguard to all the good principles he had endeavoured to instil into my mind; well knowing that the sense of moral responsibility is seldom so vivid in youth as greatly to affect our actions, unless some co-operating restraint compels us continually to examine our own hearts minutely. He did not choose to suffer his motive to appear at the moment, however laudable he knew it to be, fully understanding that my disposition was not one to submit to any checks but those I chose to impose upon myself. I notice this fact, indeed, more as a slight trait of that petty policy, which the good Father suffered to mingle with his other more estimable qualities, than from any effect that was produced upon myself; as my absence at Bordeaux was too short, and the circumstances in which we were placed were too difficult, to admit of any extended correspondence between us at that time.