"Jacques, Jacques, thou art indeed sore beset. To be one man is of course to be none at all; to be two is the average lot of the more fortunate; but to be no less than five, by all the saints in paradise, is to be worse off than that angel whose right wing was born of heaven and the left of hell!"
"What is it, my brother?" one of the men within him seemed quietly to ask. In fact, the wee, small voice appeared so actual that the good Abbé was startled.
By way of reply, for the hundredth time he read the letter.... It was from a Doctor Felix Longstreet of Oldmeadow, Kentucky, United States of America, announcing an inheritance—that is, with conditions. To him it meant wealth.
"Shall you go?" now inquired the quiet man uneasily.
"It is a green, grassy old name for a town," was the rather irrelevant reply.
"Do you wish to go?" again came the inquiry from the same anxious source.
"Kentucky!" he pronounced with not unbeautiful accents. "Kentucky sounds like poetry for 'out of doors.'"
"What will you do?" insisted several of the little men within at once.
"Things will be different there," argued the Abbé. "It is an old Protestant community. So said the letter.... You will not be in unconventional Rue St. Jacques. You cannot have liberties." He advanced a hundred objections, yet scarcely believing in any of them.
"But I may study," he continued. "I scarcely have an opportunity here. And my beloved philosophy shall have more time. I might even write my memoirs.... You know," in a tone of apology to the quiet one, "every Frenchman who can hold a pen wants to write memoirs.... Besides, cannot I make the people good Catholics?" This he said for conscience's sake.