Samuel could not repress a sigh, as he stood bowing on the threshold, and
said to them: "All is ready, gentlemen. You may walk in."




CHAPTER XXIII.

THE TESTAMENT.

When Gabriel, Rodin, and Father d'Aigrigny entered the Red Room, they
were differently affected. Gabriel, pale and sad, felt a kind of painful
impatience. He was anxious to quit this house, though he had already
relieved himself of a great weight, by executing before the notary,
secured by every legal formality, a deed making over all his rights of
inheritance to Father d'Aigrigny. Until now it had not occurred to the
young priest, that in bestowing the care upon him, which he was about to
reward so generously, and in forcing his vocation by a sacrilegious
falsehood, the only object of Father d'Aigrigny might have been to secure
the success of a dark intrigue. In acting as he did, Gabriel was not
yielding, in his view of the question, to a sentiment of exaggerated
delicacy. He had made this donation freely, many years before. He would
have looked upon it as infamy now to withdraw it. It was hard enough to
be suspected of cowardice: for nothing in the world would he have
incurred the least reproach of cupidity.

The missionary must have been endowed with a very rare and excellent
nature, or this flower of scrupulous probity would have withered beneath
the deleterious and demoralizing influence of his education; but happily,