The priest had always had a love for animals (and for ugly, common animals), which his pupil had by no means shared.

His room at the chateau had been little less than a menagerie.
He had even kept a glass beehive there, which communicated with a hole in the window through which the bees flew in and out, and he would stand for hours with his thumb in the breviary, watching the labours of his pets.

And this also had been his room! This dark, damp cell.
Here, breviary in hand, he had stood, and lain, and knelt.

Here, in this miserable prison, he had found something to love, and on which to expend the rare intelligence and benevolence of his nature.

Here, finally, in the last hours of his life, he had written on the fly-leaf of his prayer-book something to comfort his successor, and, "being dead, yet spoke" the words of consolation which he had administered in his lifetime.