The sun had set before Vellacott awoke to find that they were still lumbering on. He had, of course, lost all bearing now, but he soon found that they had been journeying eastward since leaving the coast.
A halt was made for refreshment at a small hillside village which appeared to be mainly inhabited by women, for the men were all sailors. The accommodation was of the poorest, but bread was procurable, and eggs, meat being an unknown luxury in the community.
In the lowering light they journeyed on again, sometimes on the broad post-road, sometimes through cool and sombre forests. Many times when Christian spoke kindly, or performed some little act of consideration, the poor Abbé was on the point of disclosing his own treason. Before his eyes was the vision of that little cabin. He saw again the dancing flame of the paper in his hand, throwing its moving light upon the marble features of that silent witness as the charred fragments fluttered past the still face to the ground. But as the stone is worn by the dropping water, so at last is man's better nature overcome by persistent undermining when the work is carried out by men chosen as possessing “a mind self-possessed and tranquil, delicate in its perceptions, sure in its intuitions, and capable of a wide comprehension of various subjects.” What youthful nature could be strong enough to resist the cunning pressure of influences wielded thus? So René Drucquer carried the secret in his heart until circumstances rendered it unimportant.
Man is, after all, only fallible, and those to whom is given the privilege of accepting or refusing candidates for admission to the great Society of Jesus had made a fatal error in taking René Drucquer. Never was a man more unfitted to do his duty in that station of life in which he was placed. His religious enthusiasm stopped short of fanaticism; his pliability would not bend so low as duplicity. All this the young journalist learnt as he penetrated further into the sensitive depths of his companion's gentle temperament. The priest was of those men to whom love and brotherly affection are as necessary as the air they breathe. His wavering instincts were capable of being hardened into convictions; his natural gifts (and they were many) could be raised into talents; his life, in fact, could have been made a success by one influence--the love of a woman--the one influence that was forbidden: the single human acquirement that must for ever be beyond the priest's reach. This Christian Vellacott felt in a vague, uncertain way. He did not know very much about love and its influence upon a man's character, these questions never having come under his journalistic field of inquiry; but he had lately begun to wonder whether man's life was given to him to be influenced by no other thoughts than those in his own brain--whether there is not in our existence a completing area in the development of character.