Tidings reached Martial Mazurier next day of what had befallen Victor Le Roy, and he went instantly to visit him in prison.  It was an interview which the tender-hearted officials would have invited, had he not forestalled them by inviting himself to the duty.  Mazurier had something to do in the matter of reconciling his conscience to the part he had taken, in his recent opportunity to prove himself equally a hero with Leclerc.  He had recanted, done evil, in short, that good might come; and was not content with having done this thing:  how should he be?  Now that his follower was in the same position, he had but one wish,—­that he should follow his example.  He did not, perhaps, entirely ascertain his motive in this; but it is hardly to be supposed that Mazurier was so persuaded of the justice of his course that he desired to have it imitated by another under the same circumstances.

No! he was forever disgraced in his own eyes, when he remembered the valiant John Leclerc; and it was not to be permitted that Victor Le Roy should follow the example of the wool-comber in preference to that he had given,—­that politic, wise, blood-sparing, flesh—­loving, truth-depreciating, God-defrauding example.

Accordingly he lost no time in seeking Victor in his cell.  It was the very cell in which he himself had lately been imprisoned.  Within those narrow walls he had meditated, prayed, and made his choice.  There he had stood face to face with fate, with God, with Jesus, and had decided—­not in favor of the flogging, and the branding, and the glorious infamy.  There, in spite of eloquence and fervor and devotion, in spite of all his past vows and his hopes, he had decided to take the place and part of a timeserver;—­for he feared disgrace and pain, and the hissing and scoff and persecution, more than he feared the blasting anger of insulted and forsaken Truth.

He found Victor within his cell, his bright face not overcast with gloom, his eyes not betraying doubts, neither disappointed, astonished, nor in deep dejection.  The mood he deemed unfavorable for his special word,—­poor, deceived, self-deceiving Mazurier!

He was not merely surprised at these indications,—­he was at a loss.  A little trepidation, doubt, suspicion would have better suited him.  Alas! and was his hour the extremity of another’s weakness, not in the elevation of another’s spiritual strength?  Once when he preached the Truth as moved by the Holy Ghost, it was not to the prudence or the worldly wisdom of his hearers he appealed, but to the higher feelings and the noblest powers of men.  Then he called on them to praise God by their faith in all that added to His glory and dominion.  But now his eloquence was otherwise directed,—­not full of the old fire and enthusiasm,—­not trustful in God, but dependent on prudence, as though all help were in man.  He had to draw from his own experience now, things new and old,—­and was not, by confession of the result of such experience, humiliated!