Whatever impiety, whatever atrocious Machiavelism there was in these detestable maxims, which make of a loving-kind Deity a being delighted with the tears of his creatures, was thus skillfully concealed from Hardy’s eyes, whose generous instincts were still alive.  Soon did this loving and tender soul, whom unworthy priests were driving to a sort of moral suicide, find a mournful charm in the fiction, that his sorrows would at least be profitable to other men.  It was at first only a fiction; but the enfeebled mind which takes pleasure in such a fable, finishes by receiving it as a reality, and by degrees will submit to the consequences.  Such was Hardy’s moral and physical state, when, by means of a servant who had been bought over, he received from Agricola Baudoin a letter requesting an interview.  Alone, the workman could not have broken the band of the Jesuit’s pleadings, but he was accompanied by Gabriel, whose eloquence and reasonings were of a most convincing nature to a spirit like Hardy’s.

It is unnecessary to point out to the reader, with what dignified reserve Gabriel had confined himself to the most generous means of rescuing Hardy from the deadly influence of the reverend fathers.  It was repugnant to the great soul of the young missionary, to stoop to a revelation of the odious plots of these priests.  He would only have taken this extreme course, had his powerful and sympathetic words have failed to have any effect on Hardy’s blindness.  About a quarter of an hour had elapsed since Gabriel’s departure, when the servant appointed to wait on this boarder of the reverend fathers entered and delivered to him a letter.

“From whom is this?” asked Hardy.

“From a boarder in the house, sir,” answered the servant bowing.

This man had a crafty hypocritical face; he wore his hair combed over his forehead, spoke in a low voice, and always cast clown his eyes.  Waiting the answer, he joined his hands, and began to twiddle his thumbs.  Hardy opened the letter, and read as follows: 

“Sir,—­I have only just heard, by mere chance, that you also inhabit this respectable house:  a long illness, and the retirement in which I live, will explain my ignorance of your being so near.  Though we have only met once, sir, the circumstance which led to that meeting was of so serious a nature, that I cannot think you have forgotten it.”

Hardy stopped, and tasked his memory for an explanation, and not finding anything to put him on the right track, he continued to read: 

“This circumstance excited in me a feeling of such deep and respectful sympathy for you, sir, that I cannot resist my anxious desire to wait upon you, particularly as I learn, that you intend leaving this house to day—­a piece of information I have just derived from the excellent and worthy Abbe Gabriel, one of the men I most love, esteem, and reverence.  May I venture to hope, sir, that just at the moment