“You ride, however?” suggested the Chevalier.

“A Spanish mule, the gift of Father Vincent.”

“Her Majesty’s confessor?”

“Yes.”

“You are a Jesuit?”

“I have the happiness to serve God in that order.  I have just presented my respects to her Majesty and Cardinal Mazarin.  I am come from America, my son, to see his Eminence in regard to the raising of funds for some new missions we have in mind; but I have been indifferently successful, due possibly to my lack of eloquence and to the fact that my superior, Father Chaumonot, was unable to accompany me to Paris.  I shall meet him in Rouen.”

“And so you are from that country of which I have heard so much of late—­that France across the sea?” The Chevalier’s tones expressed genuine interest.  He could now account for the presence of the mutilated hand.  Here was a man who had seen strange adventures in a strange land.  “New France!” musingly.

“Yes, my son; and I am all eagerness to return.”

The Chevalier laughed pleasantly.  “Pardon my irrelevancy, but I confess that it excites my amusement to be called ‘son’ by one who can not be older than myself.”

“It is a habit I acquired with the savages.  And yet, I have known men of fifty to be young,” said the Jesuit, his brows sinking.  “I have known men of thirty to be old.  Youth never leaves us till we have suffered.  I am old, very old.”  He was addressing some inner thought rather than the Chevalier.

“Well, I am thirty, myself,” said the Chevalier with assumed lightness.  “I am neither young nor old.  I stand on the threshold.  I can not say that I have suffered since I have known only physical discomforts.  But to call me ‘son’ . . .”

“Well, then,” replied the priest, smiling, “since the disparity in years is so small as to destroy the dignity of the term, I shall call you my brother.  All men are brothers; it is the Word.”

“That is true.”  How familiar this priest’s eyes were!  “But some are rich and some are poor; beggars and thieves and cutthroats; nobly and basely born.”

The Jesuit gazed thoughtfully into his bowl.  “Yes, some are nobly and some are basely born.  I have often contemplated what a terrible thing it must be to possess a delicate, sensitive soul and a body disowned; to long for the glories of the world from behind the bar sinister, an object of scorn, contumely and forgetfulness; to be cut away from the love of women and the affection of men, the two strongest of human ties; to dream what might and should have been; to be proved guilty of a crime we did not commit; to be laughed at, to beg futilely, always subject to that mental conflict between love and hate, charity and envy.  Yes; I can think of nothing which stabs so deeply as the finger of ridicule, unmerited.  I am not referring to the children of kings, but to the forgotten by the lesser nobility.”