Marie cannot leave Madame de Lescure alone, when her husband is, away and in such danger."

"You will soon have company here enough," said Henri. "De Lescure, and I, and Adolphe, and Heaven knows whom besides. Charette will be in arms, and d'Autachamps, the Prince de Talmont, and M. Bonchamps. At present their business is at a distance from us; but we shall probably be all brought together sooner or later, and they will all be welcome at Durbellière."

"They shall be welcome if they are friends of yours, and friends of the King; but come, Marie, it is late, let us go to bed; next week, perhaps, we shall be wanting rest, and unable to take it."

They met the next morning at breakfast, and the old Marquis was there also, and the priest, to whom they had alluded in their conversation on the preceding evening--Father Jerome, the Curé of St. Laud's--such at least had he been, and so was he still called, though his parish had been taken away from him, and his place filled by a constitutional pastor; that is, by a priest who had taken the oath to the Constitution, required by the National Assembly. Father Jerome was banished from his church, and deprived of the small emoluments of his office; but he was not silenced, for he still continued to perform the ceremonies of his religion, sometimes in some gentleman's drawing-room, sometimes in a farmer's house, or a peasant's cottage, but oftener out in the open air, under the shadow of a spreading beech, on a rude altar hastily built for him with rocks and stones.

The church of St Laud's was perfectly deserted--not a single person would attend there to hear mass said by the strange priest--the peasants would as soon have been present at some infernal rite, avowedly celebrated in honour of the devil--and yet the Curé newly sent there was not a bad man. But he was a constitutional priest, and that was enough to recommend him to the ill-will of the peasantry. In peaceable and happy times, prior to the revolution, the Curé of St Laud's had been a remarkable person, he was a man of more activity, both of mind and body, than his brethren, he was more intimate with the gentry than the generality of clergymen in the neighbourhood, and at the same time more actively engaged in promoting the welfare of the poor. The country cures generally were men who knew little of the world and its ways--who were uneducated, save as regards their own profession--who had few ideas beyond their own duties and station. This was not so with Father Jerome; he had travelled and heard the ways of men in other countries; he had not read much but he had seen 

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