A genuine murderer—­it was most irreligious, of course.  Still, some homicides were fairly justifiable, others almost meritorious; and a criminal of this kind showed, in every case, undeniable traces of manliness; one could not help respecting him in an oblique sort of fashion.  But a fool!  Torquemada, the zealous priest, the man of God, could never quite repress the promptings of his blood.  He had all the fanatic’s appreciation of violent methods; all the Southerner’s fondness for a miscreant, and contempt for a simpleton.  A mere fool—­what’s the use of him on earth?  Had the culprit been any ordinary Christian, His Reverence would not have dreamt of interfering; gladly would he have let him spend the remainder of his day sin prison which everybody knew to be the best place for stupid people—­it kept them out of mischief.

But this was not an ordinary Christian.  He was a relation.  A relation!  That meant that one must show fight for him, if only for the sake of public appearances.

He held a hurried council with his family and, half an hour later, a second one with the more influential members of the priesthood.  It was decided, in both cases, that the occasion was favourable for a long-deferred contest between the Powers of Light and the powers of darkness, the Catholic Church and modernism, the Clergy of Nepenthe and the secular authority of law and order as personified by that judge in whom all evil, public and private, flowed together.  A noble parting cheque which he had just received from Mr. van Koppen for some urgent repairs to the parish organ came in handy.  It would enable him to face the adversary with good hopes of success.  To his friends he said: 

“An insult to my family!  I shall not take it lying down.  Let them see what a humble servant of God can do.”

So saying, he girded his loins for the fray, walked in person to the post office and wrote out a lengthy telegram to the redoubtable Don Giustino Morena, the parliamentary representative of Nepenthe who, as readers of the newspapers were aware, happened to be taking a brief holiday among his own people in the South.  It was a judiciously flattering dispatch.  It prayed the famous lawyer-politician to undertake the defence of a relation, an orphan, a mere child, unjustly accused of murder and arbitrarily imprisoned, and to deign to accept a pitiful honorarium of five thousand francs—­the largest sum which a parish priest, poor but jealous of the honour of his family, could scrape together.  If the great man accepted the offer, he might arrive by the nest day’s boat.  There was a chance, thought the parroco, of his doing so.  Don Giustino was an ardent Catholic; he might be favourably impressed by the modest petition of a clergyman in his constituency.  He had promised over and over again to visit his Nepenthean constituents.  He would now be killing two birds with one stone.