exclamation. Was the inscription the vengeance of the impotent, the amiable irony of a philosopher, resigned to the inevitable, or the triumphant cry of the unrighteous, eager to deceive by blaming for his own fault the inoffensive being who had no choice but to remain silent? I gazed at the house of God, twenty paces distant. I wondered whether this ecclesiastical Latin might not be ascribed to some man of the church. Who else would know the sacred language sufficiently well to attain this degree of epigraphic platitude? Was there not in the mildness of the method of revenge a flavour of the seminary? A real man harassed by a bad neighbour would have responded by blows in kind. A priest was more likely to strike back with a sentence out of the breviary. So I reflected, questioning the unanswering stone, and never dreaming that chance would one day bring me the solution of the problem.

Chance knocked at my door a few years ago in the shape of a little account book found in the study of a lawyer, my neighbour, and fallen through inheritance into the possession of a friend of mine. It is a manuscript copy-book of which only a dozen pages are covered by accounts. On the parchment cover the two words "Malus vicinus" met my eye. Turning over the blank pages I discovered that the little notebook had been commenced at both ends—accounts at the front, and notes at the back of the volume. I found various items of information concerning births, deaths, and inheritances. At the beginning the date 1811. The well-known names of several Saint-Juirs families passed under my eyes. Then came the fateful title "Malus vicinus," followed by a long and terribly tangled story. It was the secret of the door that was there revealed to me. A priests' quarrel, as I had fancied.

The Abbé Gobert and the Abbé Rousseau, both natives of Saint-Juirs, had been ordained upon leaving the seminary of Luçon, in about 1760. The book contains nothing concerning their families. One may suppose them both to have been of good middle-class origin. Each manifestly had "a certain place in the sun." They were warm friends up to the time of their ordination, which brought about inevitable separation. Abbé Gobert was installed as vicar at Vieux Pouzauges whose curé was to sit in the Constituency among the partisans of the new order; Abbé Rousseau was sent to Mortagne-sur-Sèvres, in the heart of what was destined to be the territory of the Chouans.

Concerning their life up to the beginning of the Revolution we know nothing, except that they remained on friendly terms. They often visited each other. The walk from Pouzauges to Mortagne following the ridge of the hills of the Woodland is one of the most picturesque in our lovely western France, so rich in beautiful landscapes. Very pleasant are its valleys, watered by crystalline brooks flowing musically over pebbly beds; they are everywhere intersected by hedges behind which in serried ranks rise shady thickets, inviolate sanctuary of rural peace. There might the peasant be born and die with never the least knowledge of the outer world. Thirty years ago specimens of the kind were still to be found. If, however, you follow one of the road-cuts under the heavy, overarching boughs and laboriously climb the steep rise amid granite rocks and thick tufts of gorse mingling with brambles, which drape themselves from one to another tree stump centuries old, you emerge suddenly and as if miraculously into the very sky, whence all the earth is visible. Northward as far as the Loire, where rise the towers of Saint Peter's in Nantes, westward as far as the sea, stretches an immense garden of verdure bathed in that translucent bluish light which unites earth and sky and gives the sense of our planet launched in infinite space. But to this day man and beast contemplate this marvellous spectacle with the same indifferent eye.

In those days, the preaching of the Gospel to peasants still stupefied from serfdom, by a clergy whose leaders prided themselves upon their unbelief, in nowise resembled the stultifying mummeries of to-day. When Abbé Gobert and Abbé Rousseau, arm in arm, stopped at some farmhouse for noonday rest after a frugal meal, their free speech would doubtless startle many a modern seminarist. Their views of the future were perhaps not very different. The ardent liberalism of the good curé of Pouzauges could not have been unknown to his vicar, and how could the latter, open as he was to the new ideas, have refrained from unbosoming himself to his friend?

Meanwhile, every day witnessed the rising of the revolutionary tide. Under a tranquil surface, unknown forces were gathering for the devastating tempests soon to rage. Finally the hurricane broke loose, and its tornadoes of fire and iron shook the quiet Woodland. There was no time for reflection. Everyone was swept into the conflict without a chance to know his own mind. Abbé Rousseau, belonging to the "White Vendée," could not refuse to follow his boys when they asked him to accompany them, declaring that they were "going to fight God's battle." Abbé Gobert of the "Blue Vendée" found nothing to answer when his compatriots told him that they refused to make common cause with the foreigner against France, and that the Revolution was nothing more or less than the fulfilment of the Gospels on earth, despite the Pharisees of the ancient order, who while invoking the name of heaven appropriated all earthly privileges.

The adventures of the two Abbés during the war are not set down in the manuscript. There is mention of Abbé Rousseau being transferred to Stofflet's army, but no comment. Further on a note of three short lines in telegraphic style tells us that Abbé Gobert, "following his fatal bent," secularized himself, took up arms, and was left for dead at the taking of Fontenay. We are not told what saved him.

The writer of the little book now makes a jump to the Consulate, and we learn that the "reëstablishment of the cult," at the Concordat, resulted in the installation of Abbé Rousseau as officiating priest in his native place of Saint-Juirs. Three years later, Gobert, then a "refugee in Paris," where he "was writing for the newspapers," returned to his old home, his fortune having been increased by an inheritance from his uncle Jean Renaud, owner of the house now adorned by the Latin inscription. Destiny, after having violently separated the two men and set them at odds in a bitter war, now suddenly brought them together in their native place, where they might have the opportunity for an honest searching of their consciences, for justifications, and, before the end of life, possibly, reconciliation.

On the day after his arrival Gobert came face to face with Abbé Rousseau in the church square. He went straight to him, with hands outstretched. The other, not having had time to put himself on guard, was unable to withstand a friendly impulse. The eyes of each scrutinizingly questioned the other, but every dangerous word was avoided. The Abbé, moreover, cut short the interview with the excuse of being expected at the bedside of a sick man. They had parted with the understanding that they should soon see each other again, but two days later, Gobert, going up to the Abbé who was passing, received a curt bow from him, unaccompanied by a word of even perfunctory courtesy. It meant the end of friendly intercourse. The meeting between the "annointed of the Lord" and the "unfrocked priest" had created a scandal in the community of the faithful, and Master Pierre Gaborit, President of the vestry board, had called his curé roundly to account. Could a chaplain of the King's armies afford to be seen consorting with a tool of Satan, a renegade living amid the filth of apostasy, a man who, the report ran, had danced the Carmagnole at the foot of the scaffold?

The disconcerted Abbé listened, shaking his head.

"He was a good fellow, and a godly one, when I knew him formerly, at the seminary. He is perhaps not as guilty as they say—I hoped to bring him back into the fold——"

"One