They saw, or at least they heeded, none of this—deep in conversation, their subject seemed of engrossing interest; yet each looked only by stealth in the other’s face, withdrawing his glance and bending it on the path at his feet the instant it met his friend’s.
At times neither spoke for several paces, and it was during such periods of silence that the expression of habitual mistrust and constraint became painfully apparent. In the elder man it was softened and smoothed over, partly by effort, partly by the acquired polish of society, but the younger seemed to chafe with repressed ardour, like a rash horse, impatient but generous, fretting under the unaccustomed curb.
After a longer pause than usual, this one spoke with more energy than he had yet displayed.
“I only wish to do right. What is it to me, Malletort, that the world should misjudge me, or that I should sink in the esteem of those whose good opinion I value? I only wish to do right, I say, always in compliance with the orders of my superiors.”
The other smiled. “In the first place,” said he, “you must not call me Malletort, at least not within so short a distance of those college chimneys; but we will let that pass; for though a novice, still you are worthy of speedy promotion, and it is only for ‘novices’ in the first period of probation that our rules are so exacting. You wish to do right. So be it. You have done very wrong hitherto, or you might have been a ‘provincial’ by this time. Well, my son, confession is the first step to amendment, and then—”
He paused, and bit his lip. It was difficult to keep down the old sarcastic smile, but he did it, and looked gravely in the other’s face.
“Penance!” replied the younger. “I know it too well. Ah! mea culpa! mea culpa! I have been a great sinner. I have repented in sackcloth and ashes. I have confessed freely. I wish, yes, I repeat I wish to atone humbly, and yet, oh! for mercy’s sake, tell me, is there no way but this?”
His agony of mind was too apparent on his face. Even Malletort felt a momentary compunction when he remembered the hopeful enthusiastic youth who had sat with him under the limes at Versailles all those years ago; when he remembered the desperate career on which he had embarked, his insubordination, his apostasy, and those paroxysms of remorse that drove him back into the bosom of the church. Could this depressed and miserable penitent be the once bright and happy Florian de St. Croix? and had he been brought to this pass simply because he possessed such inconvenient superfluities as a heart and a conscience? Malletort, I say, felt a twinge of compunction, but of pity very little, of indecision, not one bit.
“Would you go to a doctor,” said he, gravely, “and teach him how to cure you of a deadly malady? Would you choose your own medicine, my son, and refuse the only healing draught prescribed, because it was bitter to the taste? There is but one way of retracing your steps. You must go back along the very path that led you into evil. That the effort will be trying, I admit. All uphill work is trying to the utmost, but how else can men attain the summit? That the task is painful I allow, but were it pleasant, where would be the penance? Besides, you know our rules, my son, the time is not far off when I shall be permitted to say, my brother. We have got you. Will you dare to hesitate ere you obey?”
An expression of intense fear came over Florian’s face, but it seemed less the physical fear of danger from without than an absorbing dread of the moral enemy within.