"Tu nas plus aucune chancehe scolded with the patronizing smile of a parent. They slid into French, hardly aware of it. They reverted to it whenever it was just the two of them. It was comforting and reminded them both of home. "Well, come and warm yourself by the fire then."

Cheverus followed the elder priest into the parlor. Abbe Matignon limped slightly from the gout in his toe. Cheverus sat in front of the fire in a high-backed chair.

"Your hands, Jean," the elder priest said in French. "They are filthy. What happened?"

Cheverus looked down at his hands. They were covered with mud from the burial grounds. He brought them to his nose and sniffed. He thought of that line from Lear, when the old man puts his hands to his nose and says they smell of mortality. "I fell," was all he gave for explanation.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes. It was nothing."

"Would you like some tea?"

"Thank you, Father, no."

AbbEU Matignon drew up a chair and sat on the other side of the fire. The flames shimmered in the old priest's chalky blue eyes, clouded now by cataracts, and the light cast his deeply lined face in a series of jagged shadows. He did not speak for a time but gazed into the fire like a man into a pool of water studying his own reflection.

The rectory, which was attached to the church on Franklin, was small and spartan but certainly preferable to the cramped quarters they had rented from Mrs. Lobb when Cheverus first arrived in America ten years earlier. The parlor had a few pieces of second-hand furniture, two chairs, a drop-front writing desk, a bookcase, on the wall a painting of the Mayenne River by an unknown French artist, sent to them by Cheverus's brother Louis. The bookcase, the only hint of largesse, held a modest library, volumes in English and French, in Latin and Greek and Italian, and even a few in Hebrew. When they had a little extra money sent to them from relatives-back home, they permitted themselves one of their few indulgences: the purchase of books from the second-hand booksellers in the city. There were the Summa and Augustine's Confessions and Melchior Canus's De bcis theobgicis, as well as books by Aristotle and Cicero. Utopia sat next to the Commedia, Paradise Lost next to a ragged folio of Shakespeare in the original English.

"You should have hired a coach," Father Matignon said after a while.

"The night air was refreshing," Cheverus replied.

"I meant it might not be safe for you to be out at this hour."

"You worry too much, Father," the younger priest said, waving off the notion.

"One of us has to," he said, a gentle upbraiding. "Catholics are being harassed."

"I was perfectly fine. Besides, a coach costs money."

"We can afford it."

"Huh! We can hardly afford to pay Yvette," Cheverus scoffed, gazing into the fire as if trying to see what Matignon saw there. "Or to buy missives or candles."

"What I cannot afford is for anything to happen to you, my friend."

Father Matignon stared over at him, his ashen gaze full of some vague meaning. Cheverus looked back to the fire.

"Do you realize how much I have come to depend on you?"

The younger priest shrugged, not so much in feigned modesty as in simple weariness of all the statement implied.

"Sometimes I wonder what little good I do here, Father."

"Nonsense. You've accomplished so very much, Jean." "What?"

"This, for one," he said, holding his hands palm up and looking around the room. "The church and rectory wouldn't exist save for your efforts, Jean. We'd still be living with Mrs. Lobb and saying Mass in the old Quaker chapel."

"We have no cemetery of our own."

"In time."

"No formal school."

"But you have some eager disciples. Young M6irtin, for instance."

Cheverus nodded, thinking fondly of his star pupil. "But we have no real classroom, Father. Few books or slates."

"God will provide, my friend," he said, what he always said. God will provide. "We must look at how far we have come, not how far we still must go," Father Matignon said philosophically. He was guided by a cautious optimism, avoiding extremes, something he tried to impart to his younger, sometimes more moody colleague.

"They still scorn us, Father. These . . . Yankees," Cheverus said.

Drawing his mouth together, Father Matignon looked over at his younger colleague. "Yes, we have our detractors," he conceded, and when Cheverus seemed about to jump in, he held up two fingers. "But we also have our friends now. Good friends. Mr. Bulfinch, for instance. Where would our church be without his generous support? Or Gardiner Greene. Even Mr. Adams. Think of it, Jean. You have broken bread with a former president of these United States. I would call that progress. And we have you to thank for that."

"Pfft" he said, frowning. "As always, you overestimate my contribution."

"And as always, you're being far too modest. It was your efforts during the fever outbreak that helped to change people's attitudes."

"I only did what I was called upon to do. No more."

"Allons done!" Father Matignon said. "You did a great deal, Jean."

When the yellow fever outbreak ravaged Boston a few years before, those who were able abandoned the city for their summer residences, leaving the poor to fend for themselves. Fathers Cheverus and Matignon, along with a handful of Protestant clergymen, had gone into the poorer sections of the city--Fort Hill, the waterfront in the north, the old poor house near Park Street--where the fever was rampant, and offered what help they could. Cheverus had entered homes, not asking if the people who lived there were Protestant or Catholic, only if they were ill and needed assistance. He had brought food to the hungry, medicine to the sick, comfort to the dying. He had helped to wash and wrap the bodies of the dead before accompanying them to the burial grounds where he said a few words over them. He threw himself into his duties as he did everything else since coming here--with a fearsome passion that Father Matignon couldn't decide was divinely or demonically inspired. But when the fever subsided, attitudes toward papists did seem to warm a little--at least for a time. People were less openly hostile. Then came the troubles in Europe, Napoleon, and the crushed rebellion in Ireland, and when the Catholic immigrants started to appear on these shores in unprecedented numbers the attitudes toward papists cooled once more.

"I don't think you quite realize how many people depend upon you," Father Matignon said. "I for one could not manage without you."

"You did before I arrived."

"It was different then," his superior said. "We were a tiny mission. A handful of communicants. Now we number almost a thousand. One thousand Catholics! We have more than a foothold. And that is due in large measure to your diligent work. It is I who am expendable."

"You are the Church here, Father."

"No, no, my friend. The Church could get alone quite well without a purblind, half-crippled pastor," the elder priest said with a chuckle. He looked over at Cheverus and both knew what was on their minds. Father Matignon was aware of the younger priest's dilemma, which was also his own. He would have to replace Cheverus if he returned to France. And while he was hardly a disinterested party, he had told his colleague he would abide by whatever he decided. He wanted only what was best for his friend, and he believed that returning home, to family and ecclesiastical responsibilities, was what was best, though of course he wouldn't admit this. The thought of losing his young, talented assistant, now his closest friend, filled him with a deep sorrow.

"Did you eat, Jean?"

"I am not hungry."

"You need to eat to regain your strength."

"I am hungry only for sleep."

Abbe Matignon had known Jean Lefebvre de Cheverus since he was a child. He'd heard the boy's confession, and later the young man had been a student of his in Paris. Before the Revolution, Dr. Matignon had been a distinguished professor of theology. He had found in Cheverus a brilliant student, a young man with a first-rate mind and a deep faith and ardent passion for serving his God and his fellow man. The abbe knew the young seminarian would make a remarkable priest, perhaps even someday being raised to the red robes of a cardinal. When Cheverus had fled to England, Father Matignon had written to him from Boston, beseeching him to join him here. There was plenty of work to be done. And for ten years, they'd worked side by side struggling to establish a Catholic diocese, to sink down roots and to nurture the frail seedling Church in this barren Protestant soil. Cheverus threw himself into his labors in the new world like a man possessed. He worked with indefatigable energy. Father Matignon would often have to rein in his younger colleague's fervor for his own good.

The two priests sat silently staring into the fire. Entire nights sometimes slipped by like this, with no more than a few words passing between them--Father Matignon reviewing the church ledgers with his magnifying glass or writing correspondence, Cheverus with his nose in a book or working on a sermon. Sometimes Cheverus would read to his friend, Montesquieu or the Bible. He especially liked Exodus, for obvious reasons. Sometimes they might play cards or chess, though the old abbe's eyesight was bad and he took forever to move his pieces. But often they just sat silently together--such was the comfortable familiarity they found in each other's company. The elder priest was by nature a circumspect, deliberate man, one who viewed things from all sides, carefully weighing all considerations before arriving at a balanced decision. Like Cheverus, he had fled France during the Terror but had come to America four years prior to his friend, entrusted by Bishop Carroll of Baltimore with the task of carving out a Catholic mission. But where the French Revolution had darkened Cheverus's outlook, for Father Matignon it had only made him more cautious, more pragmatic in his dealings. Les temps noirst as he called them--the black times--had caused him to be more vigilant, more politic. He said to Cheverus that even a man of God must always be on his guard.

The two men had become close friends over the decade of their work together. Their personalities complemented each other's. It was Father Matignon, the more, analytical and practical, who handled the church finances and negotiated the complexities of local politics, while Cheverus, whose English was nearly flawless, gave passionate Sunday sermons, drawing large, curious crowds to hear him. In fact, many Protestants came to listen to the small priest hold forth on matters of Catholic dogma. Cheverus also had a sharp wit and an equally sharp tongue, which Father Matignon would sometimes have wished to moderate. Several times he had gotten into verbal jousting matches in the city's newspapers, defending his faith against virulent, usually unsigned, anti-Catholic diatribes.

"Yvette told me you were called to the Daley house," Father Matignon stated.

"Rose wanted to speak to me."

"How are they taking the news?"

"You have heard then? About the trial?"

"It's all over the city. Terrible business. Just terrible. How is Rose faring?" "Angry that her son has been given so little time to prepare a defense. Frightened, too."

"The poor woman. What that son of hers has put her through. And she not well. What did she want of you?"

Cheverus paused for a moment, wondering how best to present what Rose Daley had asked of him. Finally he decided on the direct approach. "I would like your permission to meet with the attorney general regarding the prisoners, Father."

"For what purpose?" the elder priest asked.

"To ask for better treatment."

"Is that what they wanted to see you about?"

"Yes. They would like to be permitted to visit with Dominic, too."

"They have not been allowed to visit him?"

"Evidently not. They have gone to see Mr. Sullivan but he has refused to meet with them. So they asked if I would go on their behalf."

"I see," Father Matignon said, rubbing his chin. "And you agreed?"

Cheverus nodded. "Of course, with your permission, Father."

"Do you think that prudent? That we get involved in this . . ." He paused, searching for the right word. At last he settled on "situation."

"But we aren't involved. Not really. I just thought I could see if Sullivan would permit them to have visitors. And perhaps grant the defense more time to prepare a case. The government, after all, has had five months."

"I appreciate that, Jean. But the Church needs to handle this situation with great delicacy. We don't want to lose the gains we've made. Certainly you understand that."

"I agree, Father. But--"

"Then you would also agree that we cannot be perceived as using our influence to aid a couple of murderers."

"Accused murderers, Father. They have not been convicted of anything yet."

"From all I've heard the case against them seems rather strong."

"But even if they are guilty, they deserve a fair trial. And to be treated humanely."

"Of course. No one is debating that. I am merely saying that it may be in our best interests if the Church remained neutral."

"Neutral, Father?" Cheverus asked.

"Yes. If we simply permitted the law to take its course."

"The law has not exactly been protecting the prisoners' rights. They've been kept in jail for months without due process. There is a little matter of habeas corpus. They haven't been allowed the opportunity to consult with a lawyer or to question their accusers. Heavens, the two prisoners haven't even been permitted so much as to bathe in all that time. I am only saying they have certain legal rights."

"You know, I am hardly a supporter of Sullivan. But perhaps he has his reasons."

"Reasons!" Cheverus said a little too forcefully. "Excuse me, Father." The elder priest waved the supposed offence away. They were always free to speak their minds with each other. "You know what sort of man Sullivan is. His only reason is that they happen to be Irish and Catholic. That is his sole reason for treating them like this."

"Yes, I know Sullivan. But this crime has stirred up bad feelings against all Catholics. People are frightened. Some in our parish are afraid to come to church. They fear being harassed. Need I remind you of Declan O'Brien?"

The younger priest leaned toward the fire. He took up the poker and jabbed a birch log. He didn't want it to seem as if he were blaming Father Matignon for not taking action. What, after all, had he done till now? Nothing. He knew his superior was only pursuing the most reasonable course of action, one that placed the best interests of the Church and their parishioners before those of two men who had, in all likelihood, committed a vicious crime. In most ways Cheverus agreed with him, too. They had to protect the image of the church. Yet he kept seeing the searing look of emptiness in Rose Daley's eyes. Please help us, Father?

He turned to Father Matignon. "Who will speak out for them if not us?"

"By speaking out, it might look to some as if we are condoning such behavior."

"We are not condoning their actions, if they did what they are accused of. We are merely being compassionate, Father." "Jean, your compassion for them is commendable, but we must be very careful not to confuse compassion with foolhardiness. People will think Catholics defend their own no matter what. The Church must protect itself if it is to survive."

"But at what cost?"

The abbe made his hands into fists, placed them knuckle to knuckle, and brought his fists to rest beneath his large nose, a habit of his when he pondered a question.

"The least little spark could set off a blaze. There could be real violence."

"I know, Father. I know."

"But you still believe we should get involved?"

"Our involvement is really quite minimal. Just asking Sullivan to improve the conditions the prisoners are being held under. But if you think not. . ."

Father Matignon held up his hand in a kind of surrender. "All right. You have convinced me, Jean. As usual, your rhetorical skills far surpass mine." Father Matignon conceded a smile, not so much in defeat as in pride--the pride of a teacher in a gifted student. "When would you plan to meet with him?"

"Tomorrow if possible," he offered. "He may have already left for the trial."

Father Matignon nodded his head. "Then go with my blessing. Just remember to exercise discretion, Jean. We do not want to make him more of an enemy than he already is. He may be an insufferable bore, but he is an influential one nonetheless."

The two priests laughed at that.

"You should get some rest, Jean."

Oddly enough, he was no longer tired. At least his mind wasn't. It was alert, restless with thoughts.

"One more thing, Father," Cheverus said, glancing over at the old abbPS. "Do you think it advisable for me to accompany the Daleys to Northampton?"

"Did they ask you again?" "Yes."

"I thought we already decided that, Jean?" he said, furrowing his brow.

"My presence might be of comfort to the prisoners. Finola said her husband desires to make confession."