And all he saw of Paris himself was from the windows of the hospital, where he and I would stand by the hour looking out into the square. For the air itself he had to take it in a little garden at the back, surrounded by a high wall, and affording a seclusion that even the priest could avail himself of without the hazard of discovery. He used to sit in an arbour there in the warmth of the day, and it was there I saw another trait of his character that helped me much to forget his shortcomings.
Over his head, within the doorway of the bower, he hung a box and placed therein the beginnings of a bird's nest. The thing was not many hours done when a pair of birds came boldly into his presence as he sat silent and motionless in the bower, and began to avail themselves of so excellent a start in householding. In a few days there were eggs in the nest, and 'twas the most marvellous of spectacles to witness the hen sit content upon them over the head of the fat man underneath, and the cock, without concern, fly in and out attentive on his mate.
But, indeed, the man was the friend of all helpless things, and few of the same came his way without an instinct that told them it was so. Not the birds in the nest alone were at ease in his society; he had but to walk along the garden paths whistling and chirping, and there came flights of birds about his head and shoulders, and some would even perch upon his hand. I have never seen him more like his office than when he talked with the creatures of the air, unless it was on another occasion when two bairns, the offspring of an inmate in the hospital, ventured into the garden, finding there another child, though monstrous, who had not lost the key to the fields where blossom the flowers of infancy, and frolic is a prayer.
But he dare not set a foot outside the walls of our retreat, for it was as useless to hide Ballageich under a Kilmarnock bonnet as to seek a disguise for his reverence in any suit of clothes. Bernard would come to us rarely under cover of night, but alas! there were no letters for me now, and mine that were sent through him were fewer than before. And there was once an odd thing happened that put an end to these intromissions; a thing that baffled me to understand at the time, and indeed for many a day thereafter, but was made plain to me later on in a manner that proved how contrary in his character was this mad priest, that was at once assassin and the noblest friend.