zeal on the Bishops’ account.  He had been beset, and owed his life, he says, to the fists of the Breton and Norman sailors, who had taken him on board.  It was well for me, for I doubt if ever I was tough enough to have withstood my good friends’ treatment.  He had me carried to a convent in Havre, where the fathers nursed me well; and before I was on my legs again, I had made up my mind to cast in my lot with them, or rather with their Church.”

“Oh!”

“I had been baulked of winning the one being near whom my devil never durst come.  And blood-letting had pretty well disposed of him.  I was as meek and mild as milk under the good fathers.  Moreover, as my good friend at Turin had told me, and they repeated it, such a doubly heretical baptism as mine was probably invalid, and accounted for my being as much a vessel of wrath as even my father was pleased to call me.  There was the Queen’s rosary drawing me too.  Everything else was over with me, and it seemed to open a new life.  So, bless me, what a soft and pious frame I was in when they chastened me, water, oil, salt and all, on what my father raged at folks calling Lammas Day, but which it seems really belongs to St. Peter in the Fetters.  So I was named Pierre or Piers after him, thus keeping my own initial.”

“Piers! oh! not Piers Pigwiggin?”

“Pierre de Pilpignon, if you please.  I have a right to that too; but we shall come to it by and by.  I can laugh now, or perhaps weep, over the fervid state I was in then, as if I had trodden down my snake, and by giving up everything—­you, estate, career, I could keep him down.  So it was settled that I would devote myself to the priesthood—­don’t laugh!—­and I was ordered off to their seminary in London, partly, I believe, for the sake of piloting a couple of fathers, who could not speak a word of English.  It was, as they rightly judged, the last place where my father would think of looking for me, but they did not as rightly judge that we should long keep possession there.  Matters grew serious, and it was not over safe in the streets.  There was a letter of importance from a friend in Holland, carrying the Prince of Orange’s hypocritical Declaration, which was to be got to Father Petre or the King on the night—­Hallowmas Eve it was—­and I was told off to put on a secular dress, which I could wear more naturally than most of them, and convey it.”

“Ah, that explains!”

“Apparition number one!  I guessed you were somewhere in those parts, and looked up at the windows, and though I did not see you, I believe it was your eyes that first sent a thrill through me that boded ill for Roman orders.  After that we lived in a continual state of rumours and alarms, secret messages and expeditions, until I, being strong in the arm and the wind and a feather-weight, was one of those honoured by rowing the Queen and Prince across the river.  M. de St. Victor accepted me.  He told me there would be two nurses, but never knew or cared who they were, nor did I guess, as we sat in the dark, how near I was to you.  And only for one second did I see your face, as you were entering the carriage, and I blessed you the more for what you were doing for Her Majesty.”