“Not at all, sir,” returned the monk; “for he did not rob the man—he only advised the other to do it. But only attend to this notable decision of Father Bauny, on a case which will still more astonish you, and in which you would suppose there was a much stronger obligation to make restitution. Here are his identical words: ‘A person asks a soldier to beat his neighbor, or to set fire to the barn of a man that has injured him. The question is, Whether, in the absence of the soldier, the person who employed him to commit these outrages is bound to make reparation out of his own pocket for the damage that has followed? My opinion is, that he is not. For none can be held bound to restitution, where there has been no violation of justice; and is justice violated by asking another to do us a favor? As to the nature of the request which he made, he is at liberty either to acknowledge or deny it; to whatever side he may incline, it is a matter of mere choice; nothing obliges him to it, unless it may be the goodness, gentleness, and easiness of his disposition. If the soldier, therefore, makes no reparation for the mischief he has done, it ought not to be exacted from him at whose request he injured the innocent.’” This sentence had very nearly broken up the whole conversation, for I was on the point of bursting into a laugh at the idea of the _goodness and gentleness_ of a burner of barns, and at these strange sophisms which would exempt from the duty of restitution the principal and real incendiary, whom the civil magistrate would not exempt from the halter. But had I not restrained myself, the worthy monk, who was perfectly serious, would have been displeased; he proceeded, therefore, without any alteration of countenance, in his observations. “From such a mass of evidence, you ought to be satisfied now of the futility of your objections; but we are losing sight of our subject. To revert, then, to the succor which our fathers apply to persons in straitened circumstances, Lessius, among others, maintains that ‘it is lawful to steal, not only in a case of extreme necessity, but even where the necessity is _grave_, though not extreme.’”