When pious persons and vestrymen denounced the fraud, begging the abbe to consult them in future before lending himself to such cupidity, he would say:-- "But suppose they had done something wrong to obtain their bit of land?
Isn't it doing good when we prevent evil ?" Some persons may wish for a sketch of this figure, remarkable for the fact that science and literature had filled the heart and passed through the strong head without corrupting either.

At sixty years of age the abbe's hair was white as snow, so keenly did he feel the sorrows of others, and so heavily had the events of the Revolution weighed upon him.

Twice incarcerated for refusing to take the oath he had twice, as he used to say, uttered in "In manus." He was of medium height, neither stout nor thin.

His face, much wrinkled and hollowed and quite colorless, attracted immediate attention by the absolute tranquillity expressed in its shape, and by the purity of its outline, which seemed to be edged with light.

The face of a chaste man has an unspeakable radiance.