For it was no common vengeance, no layman's vengeance, coarse and clumsy,
which the priest had imagined in the dark hours of the night, when his
feverish brain kept him wakeful. To see Count Hannibal roll in the dust
had gone but a little way towards satisfying him. No! But to drag from
his arms the woman for whom he had sinned, to subject her to shame and
torture in the depths of some convent, and finally to burn her as a
witch--it was that which had seemed to the priest in the night hours a
vengeance sweet in the mouth.
But the thing seemed unattainable in the circumstances. The city was
cowed; the priest knew that no dependence was to be placed on Montsoreau,
whose vice was avarice and whose object was plunder. To the Archdeacon's
feeble words, therefore, "We must look," the priest retorted sternly,
"not to M. de Montsoreau, reverend Father, but to the pious of Angers! We
must cry in the streets, 'They do violence to God! They wound God and
His Mother!' And so, and so only, shall the unholy thing be rooted out!"
"Amen!" the Cure of St.-Benoist muttered, lifting his head; and his dull
eyes glowed awhile. "Amen! Amen!" Then his chin sank again upon his
breast.
But the Canons of Angers looked doubtfully at one another, and timidly at
the speakers; the meat was too strong for them.
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