“What, sir?” said I, with much warmth, “you have informed yonder Jew of the disgrace awaiting his family! That’s nice of you! Allow me to embrace you. But, if so, Mosaide’s wrath threatened M. d’Anquetil, and not yourself?” The abbé replied with an air of nobility and honesty, with a natural indulgence for human weaknesses, an obliging sweetness, and the imprudent kindness of an easy heart--by all of which men are often induced to do inconsiderate things and expose themselves to the severity of the futile judgments of mankind: “I will not keep it a secret from you, my dear Tournebroche, that, giving way to the pressing solicitations of that young gentleman, I obligingly promised to go on his errand to Jahel and to neglect nothing to induce her to elope with him.” “Alas!” I exclaimed, “you did, sir. I cannot fully tell how deeply your action wounds and affects me.” “Tournebroche,” replied he sternly, “you speak like a Pharisee. One of the fathers, as amiable as he was austere, has said: ‘Turn your eyes on yourself and take care not to judge the doings of others. Judging others is an idle labour; usually one is erring, often sinning, by so doing, but by examining and judging oneself your labour will always be fruit-bearing.’ It is written, ‘Thou shalt not be afraid of the judgment of men,’ and the Apostle Paul said that he did not trouble himself about being judged by men. If I refer to some of the finest texts in morals it is to enlighten you, Tournebroche, to make you return to the humble and sweet modesty which suits you, and not to defend my innocence, when the multitude of my iniquities weighs on me and bears me down. It is difficult not to glide into sin, and proper not to fall into despondency at every step one takes on this earth, whereon everything participates, at one and the same time, in the original curse, and the redemption effected by the blood of the Son of God. I do not want to colour my faults, and I freely confess that the embassy I undertook at the request of M. d’Anquetil is an outcome of Eve’s downfall, and it was, to say it bluntly, one of the numberless consequences, on the wrong side, of the humble and painful sentiment which I now feel, and is drawn out of the desire and hope of my eternal welfare. You have to represent to yourself mankind balancing between damnation and redemption to understand me truly when I say that at the present hour I am sitting on the good end of the seesaw after having been this very morning on the wrong end. I freely avow that in passing through the mandrake lane, from whence Mosaide’s cottage is to be seen, I hid behind an ivy-thorn bush, waiting for Jahel to appear at her window. Very soon she came. I showed myself, and beckoned her to come down. She came as soon as she was able to escape her uncle’s vigilance. I gave her a brief report of the events of the night, of which she had not known. I informed her of M. d’Anquetil’s