There was something of the priest of the olden time about him; he held to the Church and to the clergy passionately; saw the bearings of things, and no selfishness marred his one ambition, which was to serve.  That was his motto,—­to serve the Church and the monarchy wherever it was most threatened; to serve in the lowest rank like a soldier who feels that he is destined, sooner or later, to attain command through courage and the resolve to do his duty.  He made no compromises with his vows of chastity, and poverty, and obedience; he fulfilled them, as he did the other duties of his position, with that simplicity and cheerful good-humor which are the sure indications of an honest heart, constrained to do right by natural impulses as much as by the power and consistency of religious convictions.

The priest had seen at first sight Blondet’s attachment to the countess; he saw that between a Troisville and a monarchical journalist he could safely show himself to be a man of broad intelligence, because his calling was certain to be respected.  He usually came to the chateau very evening to make the fourth at a game of whist.  The journalist, able to recognize the abbe’s real merits, showed him so much deference that the pair grew into sympathy with each other; as usually happens when men of intelligence meet their equals, or, if you prefer it, the ears that are able to hear them.  Swords are fond of their scabbards.

“But to what do you attribute this state of things, Monsieur l’abbe, you who are able, through your disinterestedness, to look over the heads of things?”

“I shall not talk platitudes after such a flattering speech as that,” said the abbe, smiling.  “What is going on in this valley is spreading more or less throughout France; it is the outcome of the hopes which the upheaval of 1789 caused to infiltrate, if I may use that expression, the minds of the peasantry, the sons of the soil.  The Revolution affected certain localities more than others.  This side of Burgundy, nearest to Paris, is one of those places where the revolutionary ideas spread like the overrunning of the Franks by the Gauls.  Historically, the peasants are still on the morrow of the Jacquerie; that defeat is burnt in upon their brain.  They have long forgotten the facts which have now passed into the condition of an instinctive idea.  That idea is bred in the peasant blood, just as the idea of superiority was once bred in noble blood.  The revolution of 1789 was the retaliation of the vanquished.  The peasants then set foot in possession of the soil which the feudal law had denied them for over twelve hundred years.  Hence their desire for land, which they now cut up among themselves until actually they divide a furrow into two parts; which, by the bye, often hinders or prevents the collection of taxes, for the value of such fractions of property is not sufficient to pay the legal costs of recovering them.”