"Yes."
"And you profess to feel all this?"
"I profess to be a humble minister of Christ—imperfect enough, Heaven knows, sir! I ask your pardon for complaining at your words. They did not shock me very much. How should they, when I came expecting them? Farewell, sir; I will return to Auvergne, and die in the midst of my people."
"Stay!" exclaimed the baron, touched and softened by the one magical word. "Come back! I admire your calmness—I respect your powers of endurance. Can you trust them to the end?"
"I am frail, and very weak, sir," replied the priest. "I would bear much to save my life. I do not wish to die. I have many things unfinished yet."
"Listen to me. There is but one means of saving you; and mark—that perhaps may fail—a long, painful, and, it may be, unsuccessful operation. Are you prepared to run the risk?"
"Is there a chance, sir?"
"Yes—but a remote one. Were I the priest of Auvergne I would take that chance."
"It is enough, sir," said the old man. "Let it be done. I will undergo it, with the help of God, as their pastor should, for the sake of my dear children in Auvergne."
The baron sat at his desk, and wrote a few lines—