Mauprat
is very possible; but alas! it is by no means impossible that he has disguised himself in order to carry out some evil design, and I advise you to be on your guard."
The abbé was so frightened that he no longer wanted to keep his appointment. I suggested that it would be well to learn what the old sinner was aiming at. But, as I knew the abbé's weak character, and feared that my Uncle John would manage to win his heart by his lying confessions and wheedle him into some false step, I made up my mind to hide in a thicket whence I could see and hear everything.
But things did not happen as I had expected. The Trappist, instead of playing the politician, immediately made known his real name to the abbé. He declared that he was full of contrition, and that, as his conscience would not allow him to make the monk's habit a refuge from punishment (he had really been a Trappist for several years), he was about to put himself into the hands of justice, that he might atone in a striking way for the crimes with which he was polluted. This man, endowed as he was with conspicuous abilities, had acquired a mystic eloquence in the cloister. He spoke with so much grace and persuasiveness that I was fascinated no less than the abbé. It was in vain that the latter attempted to combat a resolution which appeared to him insane; John Mauprat showed the most unflinching devotion to his religious ideas. He declared that, having committed the crimes of the old barbarous paganism, he could not ransom his soul save by a public expiation worthy of the early Christians.
"It is possible," he said, "to be a coward with God as well as with man, and in the silence of my vigils I hear a terrible voice answering to my tears: 'Miserable
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