By chance he had seen something on an afternoon of three days before, and he had fled from it as a child would fly from a demon.

He was a purist at law, but he was a purist in life also, and not because the flush of youth had gone and his feet were on the path which leads into the autumn of a man's days.

The thing he had seen had been terribly on his mind, and he had felt that his own judgment was not sufficient for the situation, that he ought to tell someone.
The Cure was the only person who had come to his mind when he became troubled to the point of actual mental agony.

But the new curb, M.
Savry, was not like the Old Cure, and, besides, was it not stepping between the woman and her confessional?
Yet he felt that something ought to be done.

It never occurred to him to speak to Jean Jacques.