“Will he, indeed, go with me?” asked Jean, looking at the rector, who bowed his head in assent. “Well, yes, I will listen to him; I will do all he asks of me.” “You promise it?” said Denise. “The saving of your soul is what we seek. Besides, you would not have all Limoges and the village say that a Tascheron knows not how to die a noble death? And then, too, think that all you lose here you will regain in heaven, where pardoned souls will meet again.” This superhuman effort parched the throat of the heroic girl. She was silent after this, like her mother, but she had triumphed. The criminal, furious at seeing his happiness torn from him by the law, now quivered at the sublime Catholic truth so simply expressed by his sister. All women, even young peasant-women like Denise, know how to touch these delicate chords; for does not every woman seek to make love eternal? Denise had touched two chords, each most sensitive. Awakened pride called on the other virtues chilled by misery and hardened by despair. Jean took his sister’s hand and kissed it, and laid it on his heart in a deeply significant manner; he applied it both gently and forcibly. “Yes,” he said, “I must renounce all; this is the last beating of my heart, its last thought. Keep them, Denise.” And he gave her one of those glances by which a man in crucial moments tries to put his soul into the soul of another human being. This thought, this word, was, in truth, a last testament, an unspoken legacy, to be as faithfully transmitted as it was trustfully given. It was so fully understood by mother, sister, and priest, that they all with one accord turned their faces from each other, to hide their tears and keep the secret of their thoughts in their own breasts. Those few words were the dying agony of a passion, the farewell of a soul to the glorious things of earth, in accordance with true Catholic renunciation. The rector, comprehending the majesty of all great human things, even criminal things, judged of this mysterious passion by the enormity of the sin. He raised his eyes to heaven as if to invoke the mercy of God. Thence come the consolations, the infinite tendernesses of the Catholic religion,--so humane, so gentle with the hand that descends to man, showing him the law of higher spheres; so awful, so divine, with that other hand held out to lead him into heaven. Denise had now significantly shown the rector the spot by which to strike that rock and make the waters of repentance flow. But suddenly, as though the memories evoked were dragging him backwards, Jean-Francois gave the harrowing cry of the hyena when the hunters overtake it. “No, no!” he cried, falling on his knees, “I will live! Mother, give me your clothes; I can escape! Mercy, mercy! Go see the king; tell him--” He stopped, gave a horrible roar, and clung convulsively to the rector’s cassock. “Go,” said Monsieur Bonnet, in a low voice, to the agitated women.