none the less your own case which I am considering.
"Justice, devised for the protection of society, is based
upon a theory of the equality of individuals. Society, which
THE COUNTRY PARSON 137
is nothing but an aggregation of facts, is based on inequality.
So there is a fundamental discrepancy between justice and
fact. Should the law exercise a restraining or encouraging
influence on the progress of society ? In other words, should
the law oppose itself to the internal tendency of society, so as
to maintain things as they are ; or, on the other hand, should
the law be more flexible, adapt itself, and keep pace with the
tendency so as to guide it? No maker of laws since men
began to live together has taken it upon himself to decide
that problem. All legislators have been cdntent to analyze
facts, to indicate those which seemed to them to be blame-
worthy or criminal, and to prescribe punishments or rewards.
Such is law as man has made it. It is powerless to prevent
evil-doing; powerless no less to prevent offenders who have
been punished from offending again.
"Philanthropy is a sublime error. Philanthropy vainly
applies severe discipline to the body, while it cannot find the
balm which heals the soul. Philanthropy conceives projects,
sets forth theories, and leaves mankind to carry them out by
means of silence, work, and discipline dumb methods, with
no virtue in them. Eeligion knows nought of these imperfec-
tions; for her, life extends beyond this world; for Eeligion,
we are all of us fallen creatures in a state of degradation,
and it is this very view of mankind which opens out to us
an inexhaustible treasure of indulgence. All of us are on
the way to our complete regeneration, some of us are further
advanced, and some less, but none of us are infallible; the
Church is prepared for sins, ay, and even for crimes. In a
criminal, society sees an individual to be cut off from its
midst, but the Church sees in him a soul to be saved. And
more, far more ! . . . Inspired by God, whose dealings
with man She watches and ponders, the Church admits our
inequality as human beings, and takes the disproportionate
burden into account, and we who are so unequal in heart, in
body or mind, in courage or aptitude, are made equal by
repentance. In this, madame, equality is no empty word;
we can be, and are, all equal through our sentiments.
138 THE COUNTRY PARSON
"One idea runs through all religions, from the uncouth
fetichism of the savage to the graceful imaginings of the
Greek and the profound and ingenious doctrines of India and
Egypt, an idea that finds expression in all cults joyous or
gloomy, a conviction of man's fall and of his sin, whence,
everywhere, the idea of sacrifice and redemption.
"The death of the Eedeemer who died for the whole human
race is for us a Symbol ; this, too, we must do for ourselves ;
we must redeem our errors ! redeem our sins ! redeem our
crimes ! There fe no sin beyond redemption all Catholicism
lies in that. It is the wherefore of the holy sacraments which
assist in the work of grace and sustain the repentant sinner.
And though one should weep, madame, and sigh like the
Magdalen in the desert, this is but the beginning an action
is the end. The monasteries wept, but acted too; they
prayed, but they civilized; they were the active practical
spreaders of our divine religion. They built, and planted,
and tilled Europe ; they rescued the treasures of learning for
us; to them we owe the preservation of our jurisprudence,
our traditions of statecraft and art. The sites of those
centres of light will be for ever remembered in Europe with
gratitude. Most modern towns sprang up about a monastery.
"If you believe that God is to judge you, the Church,
using my voice, tells you that there is no sin beyond redemp-
tion through the good works of repentance. The evil we have
wrought is weighed against the good that we have done by
the great hands of God. Be yourself a monastery here ; it is
within your power to work miracles once more. For you,
work must be prayer. Your work should be to diffuse happi-
ness among those above whom you have been set by your for-
tune and your intellect, and in all ways, even by your natural
position, for the height of your chateau above the village is
a visible expression of your social position."
They were turning towards the plains as he spoke, so that
the cure could point out the village on the lower slopes of
the hill and the chateau towering above it. It was half-past
four in the afternoon. A shaft of yellow sunlight fell across
THE COUNTRY PARSON 139
the terrace and the gardens; it lighted up the chateau and
brought out the pattern of the gleaming gilt scroll-work on
the corner balconies high up on the towers; it lit the plain
which stretched into the distance divided by the road, a sober
gray ribbon with no embroidery of trees as yet to outline a
waving green border on either side. Veronique and M. Bon-
net passed the end of the chateau and came into the court-
yard, beyond which the stables and farm buildings lay in
sight, and further yet the forest of Montegnac; the sunlight
slid across the landscape like a lingering caress. Even when
the last glow of the sunset had faded except from the highest
hills, it was still light enough in the plain below to see all the
chance effects of color in the splendid tapestry of an autumn
forest spread between Montegnac and the first peak of the
chain of the Correze. The oak-trees stood out like masses
of Florentine bronze among the verdigris greens of the wal-
nuts and chestnuts; the leaves of a few trees, the first to
change, shone like gold among the others; and all these dif-
ferent shades of color were emphasized by the gray patches
of bare earth. The trunks of leafless trees looked like pale
columns; and every tint, red, tawny, and gray, picturesquely
blended in the pale October sunshine, made a harmony of
color with the fertile lowland, where the vast fallows were
green as stagnant water. Not a tree stirred, not a bird
death in the plain,, silence in the forest; a thought in the
priest's mind, as yet unuttered, was to be the sole comment
on that dumb beauty. A streak of smoke rose here and there
from the thatched roofs of the village. The chateau seemed
sombre as its mistress' mood, for there is a mysterious law
of uniformity, in virtue of which the house takes its char-
acter from the dominant nature within it, a subtle presence
which hovers throughout. The sense of the cure's words
had reached Mme. Graslin's brain; they had gone to her
heart with all the force of conviction; the angelic resonance
of his voice had stirred her tenderness; she stopped suddenly
short. The cure stretched his arm out towards the forest;
Veronique looked at him.
140 THE COUNTRY PARSON
"Do you not see a dim resemblance between this and the
life of humanity ? His own fate for each of us ! And what
unequal lots there are among that mass of trees. Those on
the highest ground have poorer soil and less water; they are
the first to die "
"And some are cut down in the grace of their youth by
some woman gathering wood !" she said bitterly.
"Do not give way to those feelings again," he answered
firmly, but with indulgence in his manner. "The forest
has not been cut down, and that has been its ruin. Do you
see something yonder there among the dense forest?"
V6ronique could scarcely distinguish between the usual
and unusual in a forest, but she obediently looked in the
required direction, and then timidly at the cure.
"Do you not observe," he said, seeing in that glance that
Veronique did not understand, "that there are strips where
all the trees of every kind are still green?"
"Oh, so there are !" she cried. "How is it ?"
"In those strips of green lies a fortune for Montegnac and
for you a vast fortune, as I pointed out to M. Graslin. You
can see three furrows; those are three valleys, the streams
there are lost in the torrent-bed of the Gabou. The Gabon
is the boundary line between us and the next commune.
All through September and October it is dry, but when No-
vember comes it will be full. All that water runs to waste;
but it would be easy to make one or two weirs across from
side to side of the valley to keep back the water (as Riquet
did at Saint-Ferreol, where there are huge reservoirs which
supply the Languedoc canal) ; and it would be easy to increase
the volume of the water by turning several little streams
in the forest into the river. Wisely distributing it as re-
quired, by means of sluices and irrigation trenches, the whole
plain can be brought into cultivation, and the overflow, be-
sides, could be turned into our little river.
"You will have fine poplars along all the channels, and you
will raise cattle in the finest possible meadows. What is grass
but water and sun ? You could grow corn in the plain, there
THE COUNTRY PARSON 141
is quite enough depth of earth; with so many trenches there
will be moisture to enrich the soil ; the poplar-trees will flour-
ish along the channels and attract the rain clouds, and the
fields will absorb the principles of the rain: these are the
secrets of the luxuriant greenness of the valleys. Some day
you will see life and joy and stir instead of this prevailing
silence and barren dreariness. Will not this be a noble
prayer? Will not these things occupy your idleness better
than melancholy broodings?"
Veronique grasped the cure's hand, and made but a brief
answer, but that answer was grand:
"It shall be done, monsieur."
"You have a conception of this great thing," he began
again, "but you will not carry it out yourself. Neither you
nor I have knowledge enough for the realization of a thought
which might occur to any one, but that raises immense prac-
tical difficulties; for simple and almost invisible as those
difficulties are, they call for the most accurate skill of
science. So to-morrow begin your search for the human in-
struments which, in a dozen 3 r ears' time, will contrive that the
six thousand acres thus brought into cultivation shall yield
you an income of six or seven thousand louis d'or. The un-
dertaking will make Montegnac one of the richest communes
in the department some day. The forest brings in nothing
as yet ; but sooner or later buyers will come here for the splen-
did timber, treasures slowly accumulated by time, the only
treasures which man cannot procure save by patient waiting,
and cannot do without. Perhaps some day (who knows) the
Government will take steps to open up ways of transporting
timber grown here to its dockyards; but the Government
will wait until Montegnac is ten times its present size before
giving its fostering aid; for the Government, like Fortune,
gives only to those who have. By that time this estate will
be one of the finest in France; it will be the pride of your
grandson, who may possibly find the chateau too small in
proportion to his income."
"That is a future for me to live for/' said Veronique.
142 THE COUNTRY PARSON
"Such a work might redeem many errors," said the cure.
Seeing that he was understood, he endeavored to send a
last shaft home by way of her intelligence; he had divined
that in the woman before him the heart could only be reached
through the brain; whereas, in other women, the way to the
brain lies through the heart.
"Do you know what a great mistake you are making?" he
asked, after a pause.
She looked at him with frightened eyes.
"Your repentance as yet is only the consciousness of a
defeat. If there is anything fearful, it is the despair of
Satan; and perhaps man's repentance was like this before
Jesus Christ came on earth. But for us Catholics, repentance
is the horror which seizes on a soul hurrying on its downward
course, and in that shock God reveals Himself. You are like
a Pagan Orestes ; become a Saint Paul !"
"Your words have just wrought a complete change in me,"
she cried. "Now, oh ! I want to live !"
"The spirit has overcome," the humble priest said to him-
self, as he went away, glad at heart. He had found food for
the secret despair which was gnawing Mme. Graslin, by
giving to her repentance the form of a good and noble deed.
The very next day, therefore, Yeronique wrote to M. Grosse-
tete, and in answer to her letter three saddle-horses arrived
from Limoges for her in less than a week. M. Bonnet made
inquiries, and sent the postmaster's son to the chateau; the
young fellow, Maurice Champion by name, was only too
pleased to put himself at Mme. Graslin's disposal, with a
chance of earning some fifty crowns. Yeronique took a liking
for the lad round-faced, black-eyed, and black-haired, short,
and well-built and he was at once installed as groom ; he was
to ride out with his mistress and to take charge of the horses.
The head forester at Montegnac was a native of Limoges,
an old quartermaster in the Eoyal Guard. He had been trans-
ferred from another estate when the Due de Navarreins began
to think of selling the Montegnac lands, and wanted informa-
tion to guide him in the matter; but in Montegnac Forest
THE COUNTRY PARSON 143
Jerome Colorat only saw waste land, never likely to come
under cultivation, timber valueless for lack of means of trans-
port, gardens run wild, and a castle in ruins, calling for a
vast outlay if it was to be set in order and made habitable.
He saw wide rock-strewn spaces and conspicuous gray patches
of granite even in the forest, and the honest but unintelligent
servant took fright at these things. This was how the prop-
erty had come into the market.
Mme. Graslin sent for this forester.
"Colorat," she said, "I shall most probably ride out to-mor-
row morning and every following day. You should know the
different bits of outlying land which M. Graslin added to
the estate, and you must point them out to me ; I want to see
everything for myself."
The servants at the chateau were delighted at this change
in Veronique's life. Aline found out her mistress' old black
riding habit, and mended it, without being told to do so, and
next morning, with inexpressible pleasure, Mme. Sauviat saw
her daughter dressed for a riding excursion. With Champion
and the forester as her guides, Mme. Graslin set herself first
of all to climb the heights. She wanted to understand the
position of the slopes and the glens, the natural roadways
cleft in the long ridge of the mountain. She would measure
her task, study the course of the streams, and see the rough
material of the cure's schemes. The forester and Champion
were often obliged to consult their memories, for the mountain
paths were scarcely visible in that wild country. Colorat went
in front, and Champion followed a few paces from her side.
So long as they kept to the denser forest, climbing and
descending the continual undulations of a French mountain
district, its wonders filled Veronique's mind. The mighty
trees which had stood for centuries amazed her, until she
saw so many that they ceased to be a surprise. Then others
succeeded, full grown and ready for felling; or in a forest
clearing some single pine risen to giant height; or, stranger
still, some common shrub, a dwarf growth elsewhere, here
.risen, under some unusual conditions, to the height of a tree
144 THE COUNTRY PARSON
near as old as the soil in which it grew. The wreaths of mist
rolling over the bare rocks filled her with indescribable feel-
ings. Higher yet, pale furrows cut by the melting snows
looked like scars far up on the mountain sides; there were
bleak ravines in which no plant grew, hillside slopes where
the soil had been washed away, leaving bare the rock clefts,
where the hundred-year-old chestnuts grew straight and tall
as pines in the Alps; sometimes they went by vast shifting
sands, or boggy places where the trees are few; by fallen
masses of granite, overhanging crags, dark glens, wide
stretches of burnt grass or moor, where the heather was still
in bloom, arid and lonely spots where the caper grows and
the juniper, then through meadows covered with fine short
grass, where the rich alluvial soil had been brought down
and deposited century after century by the mountain torrents ;
in short, this rapid ride gave her something like a bird's-eye
view of the land, a glimpse of the dreariness and grandeur,
the strength and sweetness, of nature's wilder moods in the
mountain country of midland France. And by dint of gazing
at these pictures so various in form, but instinct with the
same thought, trie deep sadness expressed by the wild ruined
land in its barrenness and neglect passed into her own
thoughts, and found a response in her secret soul. As,
through some gap in the woods, she looked down on the gray
stretch of plain below, or when their way led up some parched
ravine where a few stunted shrubs starved among the boulders
and the sand, by sheer reiteration of the same sights she fell
under the influence of this stern scenery; it called up new
ideas in her mind, stirred to a sense of the significance under-
lying these outward and visible forms. There is no spot in
a forest but has this inner sense, not a clearing, not a thicket,
but has an analogy in the labyrinth of the human thought.
Who is there with a thinking brain or a wounded heart
that can pass through a forest and find the forest dumb?
Before you are aware its voice is in your ears, a soothing or
an awful voice, but more often soothing than awful. And
if you were to examine very closely into the causes of this
THE COUNTRY PARSON 145
sensation, this solemn, incomplex, subduing, and mysterious
forest-influence that comes over you, perhaps you will find
its source in the sublime and subtle effect of the presence of
BO many creatures all obedient to their destinies, immovable
in submission. Sooner or later the overwhelming sense of the
abidingness of nature fills your heart and stirs deeper feel-
ings, until at length you grow restless to find God in it. And
so it was that with the silence of the mountain heights about
her, out in the pure clear air with the forest scents in it,
Veronique recovered, as she told M. Bonnet in the evening,
the certainty of Divine mercy. She had glimpses of the pos-
sibility of an order of things above and beyond that in which
her musings had hitherto revolved. She felt something like
happiness. For a long time past she had not known such
peace. Could it have been that she was conscious of a certain
likeness between this country and the waste and dried-up
places in her own soul? Did she look with a certain exulta-
tion on the troubles of nature with some thought that matter
was punished here for no sin? Certain it is that her inner
self was strongly stirred.
More than once Colorat and Champion looked at her, and
then at each other, as if for them she were transfigured. One
spot in particular that they reached in the steep bed of a dry
torrent seemed to Veronique to be unspeakably arid. It was
with a certain surprise that she found herself longing to hear
the sound of falling water in those scorching ravines.
"Always to love !" she thought. The words seemed like
a reproach spoken aloud by a voice. In confusion she urged
her horse blindly up towards the summit of the mountain of
the Correze, and in spite of her guides dashed up to the top
(called the Living Eock), and stood there alone. For several
moments she scanned the whole country below her. She had
heard the secret voices of so many existences asking to live,
and now something took place within her that determined
her to devote herself to this work with all the perseverance
which she had already displayed to admiration. She tied
her horse's bridle to a tree and sat down on a slab of rock.
146 THE COUNTRY PARSON
Her eyes wandered over the land where nature showed herself
so harsh a step-dame, and felt within her own heart some-
thing of the mother's yearning which she had felt over her
child. Her half-unconscious meditations, which, to use her
own beautiful metaphor, "had sifted her heart," had prepared
her to receive the sublime teaching of the scene that lay before
her.
"It was then," she told the cure, "that I understood that
our souls need to be tilled quite as much as the land."
The pale November sunlight shone over the wide landscape,
but already a few gray clouds were gathering, driven across
the sky by a cold west wind. It was now about three o'clock.
Veronique had taken four hours to reach the point; but, as
is the wont of those who are gnawed by profound inward
misery, she gave no heed to anything without. At that mo-
ment her life shared the sublime movement of nature and
dilated within her.
"Do not stay up there any longer, madame," said a man's
voice, and something in its tone thrilled her. "You cannot
reach home again in any direction if you do, for the nearest
house lies a couple of leages away, and it is impossible to find
your way through the forest in the dark. And even those
risks are nothing compared with the risk you are running
where you are ; in a few moments it will be deadly cold on the
peak; no one knows the why or wherefore, but it has been
the death of many a one before now."
Mme. Graslin, looking down, saw a face almost black with
sunburn, and two eyes that gleamed from it like tongues of
fire. A shock of brown hair hung on either side of the face,
and a long pointed beard wagged beneath it. The owner of
the face respectfully raised one of the great broad-brimmed
hats which the peasantry wear in the midland districts of
France, and displayed a bald but magnificent brow, such as
sometimes in a poor man compels the attention of passers-by.
Veronique felt not the slightest fear; for a woman in such
a position as hers, all the petty considerations which cause
feminine tremors have ceased to exist.
THE COUNTRY PARSON 147
"How did you come there?" she asked him.
"I live here, hard by," the stranger answered.
"And what do you do in this out-of-the-way place ?" asked
Veronique.
"I live in it."
"But how, and on what do you live ?"
"They pay me a trifle for looking after this part of the
forest," he said, pointing to the slopes of the peak opposite
the plains of Montegnac. As he moved, Mme. Graslin caught
sight of a game-bag and the muzzle of a gun, and any mis-
givings she might have entertained vanished forthwith.
"Are you a keeper ?"
"No, madame. You can't be a keeper until you have been
sworn, and you can't take the oath unless you have all your
civic rights "
"Then, who are you?"
"I am Farrabesche," said the man, in deep humility, with
his eyes on the ground.
The name told Mme. Graslin nothing. She looked at the
man before her. In an exceedingly kindly face there were
signs of latent savagery; the uneven teeth gave an ironical
turn, a suggestion of evil hardihood to the mouth and blood-
red lips. In person he was of middle height, broad in the
shoulders, short in the neck, which was very full and deeply
sunk. He had the large hairy hands characteristic of violent
tempered people capable of abusing their physical advan-
tages. His last words suggested some mystery, and his bear-
ing, face, and figure all combined to give to that mystery a ter-
rible interpretation.
"So you are in my employ?" Veronique said gently.
"Then have I the honor of speaking to Mme. Graslin?"
asked Farrabesche.
"Yes, my friend," said she.
Farrabesche vanished with the speed of some wild creature
after a frightened glance at his mistress. Veronique hastily
mounted and went down to her two servants; the men were
growing uneasy about her, for the inexplicable unwholesome-
148 THE COUNTRY PARSON
ness of the Living Eock was well known in the country.
Colorat begged her to go down a little valley into the plain.
"It would be dangerous to return by the higher ground," he
said; the tracks were hard to find, ancl crossed each other,
and in spite of his knowledge of the country, he might lose
himself.
Once in the plain, Veronique slackened the pace of her
horse.
"Who is this Farrabesche whom you employ?" she asked,
turning to the head forester.
"Did madame meet him?" exclaimed Colorat.
"Yes, but he ran away."
"Poor fellow! Perhaps he does not know how kind
madame is."
"But, after all, what has he done ?"
"Why, madame, Farrabesche is a murderer," Champion
blurted out.
"Then, of course, he was pardoned, was he not ?" Veronique
asked in a tremulous voice.
"No, madame," Colorat answered. "Farrabesche was tried
at the Assizes, and condemned to ten years' penal servitude;
but he only did half his time, for they let him oft* the rest of
the sentence; he came back from the hulks in 1827. He owes