"`A.--One of my brethren was houseless.His life had been honest and laborious.In his old age his strength had failed him, and sickness had come at the back of it; almost in a dying state, he had been driven from his humble dwelling by a pitiless landlord, to whom he owed a year's rent.I received the old man in my house, and soothed his last days.
The poor creature had toiled and suffered all his life; dying, he uttered no word of bitterness at his hard fate; he recommended his soul to God and piously kissed the crucifix.His pure and simple spirit returned to the bosom of its Creator.I closed his eyes with respect, I buried him, I prayed for him; and, though he died in the Protestant faith, I thought him worthy of a place in consecrated ground.'"
"Worse and worse!" said the cardinal."This tolerance is monstrous.It is a horrible attack on that maxim of Catholicism: `Out of the pale of the Church there is no salvation.'"
"And all this is the more serious, my lord," resumed Father d'Aigrigny, "because the mildness, charity, and Christian devotion of Abbe Gabriel have excited, not only in his parish, but in all the surrounding districts, the greatest enthusiasm.The priests of the neighboring parishes have yielded to the general impulse, and it must be confessed that but for his moderation a wide-spread schism would have commenced."
"But what do you hope will result from bringing him here?" said the prelate.
"The position of Abbe Gabriel is complicated; first of all, he is the heir of the Rennepont family."
"But has he not ceded his rights?" asked the cardinal.
"Yes, my lord; and this cession, which was at first informal, has lately, with his free consent, been made perfectly regular in law; for he had sworn, happen what might, to renounce his part of the inheritance in favor of the Society of Jesus.Nevertheless, his Reverence Father Rodin thinks, that if your Eminence, after explaining to Abbe Gabriel that he was about to be recalled by his superiors, were to propose to him some eminent position at Rome, he might be induced to leave France, and we might succeed in arousing within him those sentiments of ambition which are doubtless only sleeping for the present; your Eminence, having observed, very judiciously, that every reformer must be ambitious."