This worthy priest was a poor Savoyard clergyman who had offended his bishop by some youthful fault; he had crossed the Alps to find a position which he could not obtain in his own country.  He lacked neither wit nor learning, and with his interesting countenance he had met with patrons who found him a place in the household of one of the ministers, as tutor to his son.  He preferred poverty to dependence, and he did not know how to get on with the great.  He did not stay long with this minister, and when he departed he took with him his good opinion; and as he lived a good life and gained the hearts of everybody, he was glad to be forgiven by his bishop and to obtain from him a small parish among the mountains, where he might pass the rest of his life.  This was the limit of his ambition.

He was attracted by the young fugitive and he questioned him closely.  He saw that ill-fortune had already seared his heart, that scorn and disgrace had overthrown his courage, and that his pride, transformed into bitterness and spite, led him to see nothing in the harshness and injustice of men but their evil disposition and the vanity of all virtue.  He had seen that religion was but a mask for selfishness, and its holy services but a screen for hypocrisy; he had found in the subtleties of empty disputations heaven and hell awarded as prizes for mere words; he had seen the sublime and primitive idea of Divinity disfigured by the vain fancies of men; and when, as he thought, faith in God required him to renounce the reason God himself had given him, he held in equal scorn our foolish imaginings and the object with which they are concerned.  With no knowledge of things as they are, without any idea of their origins, he was immersed in his stubborn ignorance and utterly despised those who thought they knew more than himself.

The neglect of all religion soon leads to the neglect of a man’s duties.  The heart of this young libertine was already far on this road.  Yet his was not a bad nature, though incredulity and misery were gradually stifling his natural disposition and dragging him down to ruin; they were leading him into the conduct of a rascal and the morals of an atheist.

The almost inevitable evil was not actually consummated.  The young man was not ignorant, his education had not been neglected.  He was at that happy age when the pulse beats strongly and the heart is warm, but is not yet enslaved by the madness of the senses.  His heart had not lost its elasticity.  A native modesty, a timid disposition restrained him, and prolonged for him that period during which you watch your pupil so carefully.  The hateful example of brutal depravity, of vice without any charm, had not merely failed to quicken his imagination, it had deadened it.  For a long time disgust rather than virtue preserved his innocence, which would only succumb to more seductive charms.

The priest saw the danger and the way of escape.  He was not discouraged by difficulties, he took a pleasure in his task; he determined to complete it and to restore to virtue the victim he had snatched from vice.  He set about it cautiously; the beauty of the motive gave him courage and inspired him with means worthy of his zeal.  Whatever might be the result, his pains would not be wasted.  We are always successful when our sole aim is to do good.