inner every day.
　　Farewell; my paper is at an end, and this forces me to leave you.
　　A thousand good wishes.
　　 BAPTISTINE.
　　 P.S. Your grand nephew is charming.
　　Do you know that he will soon be five years old?
　　Yesterday he saw some one riding by on horseback who had on knee-caps, and he said, "What has he got on his knees?" He is a charming child!
　　His little brother is dragging an old broom about the room, like a carriage, and saying, "Hu!"
　　 As will be perceived from this letter, these two women understood how to mould themselves to the Bishop's ways with that special feminine genius which comprehends the man better than he comprehends himself. The Bishop of D----, in spite of the gentle and candid air which never deserted him, sometimes did things that were grand, bold, and magnificent, without seeming to have even a suspicion of the fact. They trembled, but they let him alone.
　　Sometimes Madame Magloire essayed a remonstrance in advance, but never at the time, nor afterwards. They never interfered with him by so much as a word or sign, in any action once entered upon.
　　At certain moments, without his having occasion to mention it, when he was not even conscious of it himself in all probability, so perfect was his simplicity, they vaguely felt that he was acting as a bishop; then they were nothing more than two shadows in the house.
　　They served him passively; and if obedience consisted in disappearing, they disappeared. They understood, with an admirable delicacy of instinct, that certain cares may be put under constraint.
　　Thus, even when believing him to be in peril, they understood, I will not say his thought, but his nature, to such a degree that they no longer watched over him. They confided him to God.
　　Moreover, Baptistine said, as we have just read, that her brother's end would prove her own.
　　Madame Magloire did not say this, but she knew it.


BOOK FIRST--A JUST MAN
CHAPTER X
　　THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT
　　 At an epoch a little later than the date of the letter cited in the preceding pages, he did a thing which, if the whole town was to be believed, was even more hazardous than his trip across the mountains infested with bandits.
　　In the country near D---- a man lived quite alone.
　　This man, we will state at once, was a former member of the Convention. His name was G----
　　Member of the Convention, G---- was mentioned with a sort of horror in the little world of D---- A member of the Convention--can you imagine such a thing?
　　That existed from the time when people called each other thou, and when they said "citizen."
　　This man was almost a monster.
　　He had not voted for the death of the king, but almost.
　　He was a quasi-regicide. He had been a terrible man. How did it happen that such a man had not been brought before a provost's court, on the return of the legitimate princes? They need not have cut off his head, if you please; clemency must be exercised, agreed; but a good banishment for life.①①網①
　　An example, in short, etc.
　　Besides, he was an atheist, like all the rest of those people.
　　Gossip of the geese about the vulture.
　　Was G---- a vulture after all?
　　Yes; if he were to be judged by the element of ferocity in this solitude of his.
　　As he had not voted for the death of the king, he had not been included in the decrees of exile, and had been able to remain in France.
　　He dwelt at a distance of three-quarters of an hour from the city, far from any hamlet, far from any road, in some hidden turn of a very wild valley, no one knew exactly where.
　　He had there, it was said, a sort of field, a hole, a lair.
　　There were no neighbors, not even passers-by. Since he had dwelt in that valley, the path which led thither had disappeared under a growth of grass. The locality was spoken of as though it had been the dwelling of a hangman.
　　Nevertheless, the Bishop meditated on the subject, and from time to time he gazed at the horizon a