All the townspeople were down at the gate, waiting for the return of those who had gone out to seek for the dead.  The moon had risen above the fog, and shone clearly down upon them.  Delphine’s mother, with her younger children about her, sat on the stone where she had been sitting when Michel set out on his perilous quest.  She and the other women could see a crowd of the men coming back, carrying some burden among them.  But as they drew near to the gate, Delphine sprang forward from among them and ran and threw herself into her mother’s arms.  “A miracle!” cried some voices amid the crowd; a miracle wrought by their patron St. Michel.  If Michel Lorio were safe, surely he would become again a good Christian, and return to his ancient faith.  But Michel Lorio was dead, and all that could be done for him was to carry his dead body home to his paralytic mother, and lay it upon his bed in the little loft where he had spent so many hours of sorrowful loneliness.

It was a perplexing problem to the simple people.  Some said that Michel had been permitted to save the child by a diabolic agency which had failed him when he sought to save himself.  Others maintained that it was no other than the great archangel St. Michel who had securely fastened the net upon the stake and so preserved Delphine, while the heretic was left to perish.  A few thought secretly, and whispered it in fear, that Michel had done a noble deed, and won heaven thereby.  The cure, who came to look upon the calm dead face, opened his lips after long and profound thought: 

“If this man had been a Christian,” he said, “he would have been a saint and a martyr.”

A PERILOUS AMOUR, By S. J. Weyman

AN EPISODE ADAPTED FROM THE MEMOIRS OF MAXIMILIAN DE BETHUNE, DUKE OF SULLY

Such in brief were the reasons which would have led me, had I followed the promptings of my own sagacity, to oppose the return of the Jesuits.  It remains for me only to add that these arguments lost all their weight when set in the balance against the safety of my beloved master.  To this plea the king himself for once condescended, and found those who were most strenuous to dissuade him the least able to refute it; since the more a man abhorred the Jesuits, the more ready he was to allow that the king’s life could not be safe from their practices while the edict against them remained in force.  The support which I gave to the king on this occasion exposed me to the utmost odium of my co-religionists, and was in later times ill-requited by the order.  But a remarkable incident that occurred while the matter was still under debate, and which I now for the first time make public, proved beyond question the wisdom of my conduct.