“For example, it has secured me your good offices,” said I.  “You would not have given me this good turn if I had been a worthless villain.”

“Well, perhaps not; supposing I had known you for such—­though worthless villains often escape deserved punishment, and sometimes are very plausible, and pay very well.  And sometimes not”—­reflectively.

“You seem to remember a case in point,” said I, smiling.

“Well, I do,” said La Croissette.  “There was a young lord who led a sad course, and nearly fell into the hands of justice.  He had a dashing, off-hand manner, that made friends till he was found out for what he was; and partly because he talked me over, and partly for high pay, I smuggled him beyond the reach of his enemies.  But the pay never came.  He won’t get me to help him another time.”

“He’ll miss the want of a good character in the long run, then,” said I.

“Oh, he has done so already; he lies in prison now.  But so do many of you Huguenots, who have done nothing amiss.  It seems to me there is one event to the good and to the wicked.”

“Oh no, do not believe it,” said I.  “In the first place, none of us are righteous; no, not one; our merits only comparative.  Thus, there is something in every one of us to punish; and sometimes the Lord sees fit to chasten His best-loved servants so severely, that it is difficult to distinguish their chastisement from His judgments on the wicked.”

“That comes to what I was saying,” said La Croissette; “that there is but one event to the good and to the bad.”

“It seems so, though it is not so,” said I.  “But don’t you perceive in this a grand argument in favor of a future life?”

“I am no scholar, I;—­you must explain it to me,” said La Croissette.

“If the Lord lets his dear children fall into the same afflictions here as the rebellious and impenitent, it is because He knows that in the long run, it will be to their advantage rather than otherwise:  that they will turn their trials to such good account as actually to be the better for them; and that their light affliction, which is but for a moment, will work for them a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.  So that hereafter they shall look back on their present pains, not only with indifference but with thankfulness.  But ah! where shall then the unrighteous and sinner appear?”

“You seem to have a natural gift for preaching,” said La Croissette, after a pause.  “Where will they appear, say you?  Why, if our priests are to be believed, those of them, even the very worst, who have money enough to pay for masses and indulgences, may buy themselves off from purgatory, and shine in glory with the best.”

“Does not that carry incredibility and absurdity on the very face of it?”

“It seems very hard on the poor man who can’t buy himself off,” said La Croissette.  “You Huguenots, then, don’t believe in it?”