“What then?”
“Well, I know that it is useless to dissuade a noble young man in search of adventure; but the esteem I feel for you inspires me with another plan for helping you. The unfortunate counterfeiter to whom I bore the last consolations of religion yesterday was a miner. Just before he died he gave me a paper inscribed with his name, saying that this passport would protect me from all danger if I ever had to travel among those mountains. Alas! what can it avail a poor priest who must live and die among prisoners, and who, moreover, inter castra latronum, should seek no other defence than patience and prayer, the only weapons of God! I did not decline the pass, because we should never distress by refusal the heart of one who in a few minutes more will have nothing to receive or to give on earth. The good God deigned to inspire me, for now I can offer you this parchment, that it may go with you in all the perils of your journey, and that the gift of the dying man may benefit the traveller.”
Ordener accepted the old priest’s gift with emotion.
“Sir Chaplain,” said he, “God grant that your prayer may be heard! Thank you. But,” he added, laying his hand on his sword, “I already carry my passport at my side.”
“Young man,” said the priest, “that poor parchment may perhaps protect you better than your steel blade. The gaze of a penitent man is more potent than the archangel’s sword. Farewell! My prisoners await me. Pray sometimes for them and me.”
“Holy priest,” rejoined Ordener, with a smile, “I told you that your prisoners should be pardoned, and they shall be.”
“Oh, do not speak with such assurance, my son! Do not tempt the Lord! No man can know what passes in the mind of another, and you cannot tell what the viceroy’s son may decide to do. Perhaps, alas! he will never condescend to admit a humble chaplain to his presence. Farewell, my son; may your journey be blessed, and may you sometimes remember the poor priest and pray for his unhappy prisoners.”
XV.
Welcome, Hugo; tell me, did you ever see so terrible a storm!—Maturin: Bertram.
IN a room communicating with the apartments of the Governor of Throndhjem, three of his Excellency’s secretaries sat at a table loaded with parchments, papers, inkstands, and seals, a fourth chair, left vacant, showing that one of the scribes was late. They had been silently writing and thinking for some time, when one of them exclaimed: “Did you know, Wapherney, that the poor librarian, Foxtipp, is to be dismissed by the bishop, owing to the letter which you wrote recommending Dr. Anglyvius’s petition to his favorable notice?”