and pestilent Waldenses; but whether his piety took the passive or the aggressive form, it always shrank from the subtleties of doctrine.  To live like the saints, rather than to reason like the fathers, was his ideal of Christian conduct; if indeed a vague pity for suffering creatures and animals was not the source of his monastic yearnings, and a desire to see strange countries the secret of his zeal against the infidel.

The chaplain, though reproving his lukewarmness in matters of dogma, could not but commend his devotion to the saints; and one day his grandmother, to reward him for some act of piety, informed him with tears of joy that he was destined for holy orders, and that she had good hopes of living to see him a bishop.  This news had hardly the intended effect; for Odo’s dream was of the saint’s halo rather than the bishop’s mitre; and throwing himself on his knees before the old Marquess, who was present, he besought that he might be allowed to join the Franciscan order.  The Marquess at this flew into so furious a rage, cursing the meddlesomeness of women and the chaplain’s bigotry, that the ladies burst into tears and Odo’s swelling zeal turned small.  There was indeed but one person in the castle who seemed not to regard its master’s violences, and that was the dark-faced chaplain, who, when the Marquess had paused out of breath, tranquilly returned that nothing could make him repent of having brought a soul to Christ, and that, as to the cavaliere Odo, if his maker designed him for a religious, the Pope himself could not cross his vocation.

“Ay, ay! vocation,” snarled the Marquess.  “You and the women here shut the child up between you and stuff his ears full of monkish stories and miracles and the Lord knows what, and then talk of the simpleton’s vocation.  His vocation, nom de Dieu, is to be an abbot first, and then a monsignore, and then a bishop, if he can—­and to the devil with your cowls and cloisters!” And he gave orders that Odo should hunt with him next morning.

The chaplain smiled.  “Hubert was a huntsman,” said he, “and yet he died a saint.”

From that time forth the old Marquess kept Odo oftener at his side, making his grandson ride with him about his estates and on such hunting-parties as were not beyond the boy’s strength.  The domain of Donnaz included many a mile of vine and forest, over which, till the fifteenth century, its lords had ruled as sovereign Marquesses.  They still retained a part of their feudal privileges, and Odo’s grandfather, tenacious of these dwindling rights, was for ever engaged in vain contests with his peasantry.  To see these poor creatures cursed and brow-beaten, their least offences punished, their few claims disputed, must have turned Odo’s fear of his grandfather to hatred, had he not observed that the old man gave with one hand what he took with the other, so that, in his dealings with his people, he resembled one of those torrents which now devastate and now enrich their