capacity of worship, he was straightway challenged, as by a rival new
religion claiming to supersede the religion he knew, to identify
himself conclusively with this so tangible world, its suppositions,
its issues, its risks. Here was a world, certainly, which did not
halt in meditation, but prompted one to make actual trial of it, with
a liberty of heart which might likely enough traverse this or that
precept (if it were not rather a mere scruple) of his earlier
conscience. These its children, at all events, were, as he felt, in
instinctive sympathy with its motions; had shrewd divinations of the
things men really valued, and waited on them with unquestioning
docility. Two worlds, two antagonistic ideals, were in evidence
before him. Could a third condition supervene, to mend their
discord, or [39] only vex him perhaps, from time to time, with
efforts towards an impossible adjustment?

At a later date, Monseigneur Charles Guillard, then Bishop of
Chartres, became something like a Huguenot, and ceased, with the
concurrence of ecclesiastical authority, from his high functions.
Even now he was but a protege of King Charles in his relations to a
more than suspicious Pope; and a rumour of the fact, reaching somehow
these brisk young ears, had already set Gaston's mind in action,
tremblingly, as to those small degrees, scarcely realisable perhaps
one by one, though so immeasurable in their joint result, by which
one might part from the "living vine"; and at times he started back,
as if he saw his own benighted footsteps pacing lightly towards an
awful precipice. At present, indeed, the assumption that there was
sanctity in everything the kindly prelate touched, was part of the
well-maintained etiquette of the little ecclesiastical court. But,
as you meet in the street faces that are like a sacrament, so there
are faces, looks, tones of voice, among dignified priests as among