In no symbolic manner, but literally, he had "watched for the coming of his Lord," and "taken up the cross daily;" and so, when the cross was laid on him, and when the voice spoke which must speak to all, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee," he bore the burden and obeyed the summons unmoved.
_Unmoved_!--this was the fact that struck deep into the heart of Monsieur the Viscount, as he listened to Antoine's account of the Cure's imprisonment.

What had astonished and overpowered his own undisciplined nature had not disturbed Monsieur the Preceptor.

He had prayed in the chateau--he prayed in the prison.

He had often spoken in the chateau of the softening and comforting influences of communion with the lower animals and with nature, and in the uncertainty of imprisonment he had tamed a toad.

"None of these things had moved him," and, in a storm of grief and admiration, Monsieur the Viscount bewailed the memory of his tutor.
"If he had only lived to teach me!" But he was dead, and there was nothing for Monsieur the Viscount but to make the most of his example.