The Cardinal's Musketeer by Mary Imlay Taylor

PÈRE ANTOINE did not keep his appointment; in fact he was in sore perplexity between mademoiselle and Péron. Knowing the thoughts and impulses of both and pledged not to betray either, the good father found his situation full of pitfalls. He was bound to keep Renée's secrets, although he thought that he could serve her best by revealing them, partially at least. He reproached himself too, with deception, when he went to his rooms on the Rue de Bethisi and left Péron to wait for him in vain. But what could he do? Not betray mademoiselle certainly, and he had promised to give her time. The priest, whose heart was as simple as a child's with all his wisdom, crept up the stairs to his study with the air of a guilty man. He lighted only one taper and drew a heavy curtain before the window, the more completely to deceive any observer. He sat down there among his books and looked about him with dreamy eyes. His thoughts were back in the old days when he was a young man, and when between him and more serious things shone the brown eyes of the Marquise de Nancay, then Francoise de la Douane. He remembered the tenderness of it all, the sweetness and the pain -- which had lingered with him through long years, until the wound no longer ached and there was only the scar. If it had been more of earth and less spiritual there would have been an end of it long before; but Père Antoine was one of those who can suffer so keenly that no pain ever comes to them blunted, and when their cup of sorrow fills, it runs over. It is not the flesh but the spirit that grieves.

He sat with his beautiful hands crossed on his knee and the light of the taper shining softly on his white hair and into his large blue eyes. He thought not only of Francoise de la Douane but of her son, the orphan boy whom he had watched over and trained in all those years on the Rue de la Ferronnerie; he remembered the days of anxiety when he and the three faithful servants had all dreaded Pilâtre de Marsou; he remembered the cardinal's sharp cross-examination when the boy was taken into his household, and his own doubts and fears; and now it was all over and the heir happily restored to title and estates. It was certainly a cause for happiness and triumph, and yet Père Antoine's heart was freshly touched by sympathy. He had seen the reverse side of the picture; he had been the bearer of the evil tidings to Renée de Nancay; he had stood beside the bier of the forsaken and disgraced marquis. A strange fate had called the same man who had walked to the scaffold with the true Marquis de Nancay, to render the last services also to the usurper of the same title and place. He had buried both the victim and his false accuser, and now he stood in the office of counsellor and friend to the son of one and the daughter of the other. It spoke clearly for the man's honesty, his piety, his tenderness, that he could do these things without betraying any one.