When the vicar was announced the duchess rose, and made a few steps toward him in the salon,—­a distinction she granted only to cardinals, bishops, simple priests, duchesses older then herself, and persons of royal blood.

“My dear abbe,” she said, pointing to a chair and speaking in a low voice, “I need the authority of your experience before I throw myself into a rather wicked intrigue, although it is one which must result in great good; and I desire to know from you whether I shall make hindrances to my own salvation in the course I propose to follow.”

“Madame la duchesse,” replied the abbe, “do not mix up spiritual things with worldly things; they are usually irreconcilable.  In the first place, what is this matter?”

“You know that my daughter Sabine is dying of grief; Monsieur du Guenic has left her for Madame de Rochefide.”

“It is very dreadful, very serious; but you know what our dear Saint Francois de Sales says on that subject.  Remember too how Madame Guyon complained of the lack of mysticism in the proofs of conjugal love; she would have been very willing to see her husband with a Madame de Rochefide.”

“Sabine is only too gentle; she is almost too completely a Christian wife; but she has not the slightest taste for mysticism.”

“Poor young woman!” said the abbe, maliciously.  “What method will you take to remedy the evil?”

“I have committed the sin, my dear director, of thinking how to launch upon Madame de Rochefide a little man, very self-willed and full of the worst qualities, who will certainly induce her to dismiss my son-in-law.”

“My daughter,” replied the abbe, stroking his chin, “we are not now in the confessional; I am not obliged to make myself your judge.  From the world’s point of view, I admit that the result would be decisive—­”

“The means seem to me odious,” she said.

“Why?  No doubt the duty of a Christian woman is to withdraw a sinning woman from an evil path, rather than push her along it; but when a woman has advanced upon that path as far as Madame de Rochefide, it is not the hand of man, but that of God, which recalls such a sinner; she needs a thunderbolt.”

“Father,” replied the duchess, “I thank you for your indulgence; but the thought has occurred to me that my son-in-law is brave and a Breton.  He was heroic at the time of the rash affair of that poor MADAME.  Now, if the young fellow who undertook to make Madame de Rochefide love him were to quarrel with Calyste, and a duel should ensue—­”

“You have thought wisely, Madame la duchesse; and it only proves that in crooked paths you will always find rocks of stumbling.”

“I have discovered a means, my dear abbe, to do a great good; to withdraw Madame de Rochefide from the fatal path in which she now is; to restore Calyste to his wife, and possibly to save from hell a poor distracted creature.”

“In that case, why consult me?” asked the vicar, smiling.