Is not that a good motive?"
Cardinal Bonpre gazed at him in astonishment. Vergniaud appeared to
him in an entirely new light. He had always known him as a careless,
cynical-tempered man;--a close thinker,--a clever writer, and a
brilliant talker,--and he had been inclined to consider him as a
"society" priest,--one of those amiable yet hypocritical personages,
who, by the most jesuitical flatteries and studied delicacies of
manner, succeed in influencing weak-minded persons of wealth,
(especially women) to the end of securing vast sums of money to the
Church,--obtaining by these means such rank and favour for
themselves as would otherwise never have been granted to them. But
now the Abbe's frank admission of his own sins and failings seemed a
proof of his inherent sincerity,--and sincerity, whether found in
orthodoxy or heterodoxy, always commanded the Cardinal's respect.
"Are you speaking in parables or in grave earnest?" he asked. "Do
you really mean that you are shadowed by some would-be assassin? An
assassin, too, whom you actually wish to protect?"
"Exactly!" And Vergniaud smiled with the air of one who admits the
position to be curious but by no means alarming. "I want to save him
from the guillotine; and if he murders me I cannot! It is a question
of natural instinct merely.
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