It was while this incident was in progress that I caught the priest’s glance, and the slightly amused, slightly mocking smile on his face. It was clear that he had followed every detail of the passage between Jean and the farmer of Larçon. But it was the man’s expression, cold, sneering, and haughty, that arrested me, and for a moment we stared at each other. Then he bowed to me as to an inferior, courteously but haughtily, the jewel flashed brightly on his finger, and he returned to his book, as if we did not exist. Yet in that one look we exchanged I felt I had met a master mind, and I had an instinctive foreboding of ill to come from that stern and malign figure. He was tall and thin, with a receding forehead, an eagle nose, and a cruel line of red lip that contrasted strangely with the pallor of his complexion. But it was the searching light in the gray eyes, flashing beneath the thick, straight brows, that made me feel the man was reading me like an open page. And a presentiment came upon me, that here was one whose path would cross mine to my destruction. I little imagined what that crossing would mean to him, to that man whose eyes were even now fixed on St. Peter’s throne. Had Achon of Arles lived, it is not too much to say that the history of France would have been altered, and the eagle of Lorraine grasped the sceptre of my country. He possessed every quality that the Cardinal and his brother lacked. He equalled the Constable in courage and the Italian in duplicity and cunning. In a word, he was a great, bad man, such as a nation sometimes produces to its sorrow and often to its destruction. As we took our seats at the supper table, I noticed that the stranger I had first observed had shifted his position, so that his face was from us. At first I paid little heed to this, being hungry, and a little diverted by our host’s strange bearing. He looked at me knowingly, and seemed swollen with the consciousness of possessing some great secret. We were, however, relieved of his importunities by the churchman, who summoned him to receive some instructions, and it was then that Marcilly took the opportunity to whisper: “Do you recognize the priest?” “Not I.” “’Tis Achon, Abbot of St. Savin, and now Bishop of Arles. He is St. André’s brother.” “So that is Achon! He was at Lyons when I was at the Court. I like not his look.” “Nor I. We have met before, Gaspard, and he does not forget, though it suits him, apparently, not to recognize me. It was he who claimed the Chaumont estates, which came to Marie, and he is hand and glove with the Brothers. ’Tis even said that he holds the office of Inquisitor--I fear we are in the wolf’s den.” “There is another here who seems not to wish to recognize any one,” and I indicated the bashful stranger, whose back was toward us.