“They shall be welcome if they are friends of yours, and friends of the King; but come, Marie, it is late, let us go to bed; next week, perhaps, we shall be wanting rest, and unable to take it.”

They met the next morning at breakfast, and the old Marquis was there also, and the priest, to whom they had alluded in their conversation on the preceding evening—­Father Jerome, the Cure of St. Laud’s—­such at least had he been, and so was he still called, though his parish had been taken away from him, and his place filled by a constitutional pastor; that is, by a priest who had taken the oath to the Constitution, required by the National Assembly Father Jerome was banished from his church, and deprived of the small emoluments of his office; but he was not silenced, for he still continued to perform the ceremonies of his religion, sometimes in some gentleman’s drawing-room, sometimes in a farmer’s house, or a peasant’s cottage, but oftener out in the open air, under the shadow of a spreading beech, on a rude altar hastily built for him with rocks and stones.

The church of St Laud’s was perfectly deserted—­not a single person would attend there to hear mass said by the strange priest—­the peasants would as soon have been present at some infernal rite, avowedly celebrated in honour of the devil—­and yet the Cure newly sent there was not a bad man But he was a constitutional priest, and that was enough to recommend him to the ill-will of the peasantry In peaceable and happy times, prior to the revolution, the Cure of St Laud’s had been a remarkable person, he was a man of more activity, both of mind and body, than his brethren, he was more intimate with the gentry than the generality of clergymen in the neighbourhood, and at the same time more actively engaged in promoting the welfare of the poor.  The country cures generally were men who knew little of the world and its ways—­who were uneducated, save as regards their own profession—­who had few ideas beyond their own duties and station, This was not so with Father Jerome; he had travelled and heard the ways of men in other countries; he had not read much but he had seen a good deal, and he was a man of quick apprehension—­and above all a man of much energy.  He had expressed great hostility to the revolution since its commencement; at a time when so few were hostile to it, he had foreseen that it would destroy the religion and the religious feeling of the country, and he had constantly besought his flock to remain true to their old customs.  He was certainly a devout man in his own way, though he was somewhat unscrupulous in his devotions; the people were as superstitious as they were faithful, and he never hesitated in using their superstition to forward his own views.  His whole anxiety was for their welfare; but he cherished their very faults, their ignorance and their follies, to enable himself to serve them in his own manner.  He was unwilling that they should receive other education than that which they now had—­he was jealous of any one’s interfering with them but their landlord and himself.  He would not own that any change:  could better their condition, or that anything more was desirable for them than that they should live contented and obedient, and die faithful in hope.