The Confessor took my hand, and looked at me with a smile full of benignity, saying,--"We must be friends, my son; I hear a high character of you from all quarters."
I expressed, as well as I could, my willingness to meet his kindness; and as the Duchess was not well enough to appear that evening, we sat down to supper alone. I remarked that Monsieur de Villardin was more calm, though not less grave than he had seemed of late; but it was the person and demeanour of the priest that principally engaged my attention.
He was a man considerably past the prime of life; and though his frame was neither bent nor broken by the weight of years, yet his age was to be traced in his thin white hair, and in many a long deep furrow on his brow and cheek. His eye, however, was bright and clear; and his teeth of as white an ivory as ever appeared between the lips of youthful beauty. He was thin and pale, but his complexion was clear, and, probably, had never been red; and his form, which was tall, was also upright and graceful, and in no degree stiff. His robes, too, sat well upon him; which is always a sign of a lofty education or of a fine mind; for no one can feel himself perfectly at his ease in all his movements, without possessing the one, or having received the other. With Monsieur de Villardin the Confessor spoke as equal to equal; and though, from his demeanour, I might, perhaps, as a first impression, have inferred that he was one of those priests who so frequently govern, with absolute sway, the little kingdom of a private family, yet he was evidently not one of those who would truckle to the prejudices, or give indulgence to the errors, of any one in whose dwelling he was established. There was in his whole conversation a tone of bold independence, mingling with the tenderness of his manner, which took away from it the slightest appearance of subserviency, and made me feel that, in giving him the title of Father, one only addressed him by a name which he believed himself to deserve.
After supper I again retired, and, as I had promised, took my way to the apartments of the good major-domo, where the priest soon after made his appearance, and spoke with me for some time, kindly and frankly, upon a variety of indifferent subjects. He was evidently delighted to hear that my mother had been a Catholic, and that I had been originally brought up in that faith; but he pressed the subject no farther upon me, and I saw that he skilfully avoided saying one word that might make me suspicious of any design on his part, either to force himself into my own confidence, or to wring from me the secrets of others. Gradually, however, he brought the conversation round to the subject of Monsieur de Villardin, and spoke with deep, and, certainly, sincere regret, of the state to which the Duke appeared to have brought himself. He asked me no questions, however; but on my expressing equal pain at the fact, he only replied, by exhorting me to strive, by every means in my power, to remove the poison from my friend's mind. I willingly promised to continue all my efforts, and our conference thus ended.