Vincent looked about him and set to work at once. The first thing to be done was to clean out the church, which was in such a state of dirt and squalor that people had some excuse for not wishing to enter it. He then turned his attention to the clergy already there. They were ignorant and easygoing men, for the most part, who thought a good deal more of their own amusement than of the needs of their flock, but they were not bad at heart.
Vincent's representations of what a priest's life ought to be astonished them at first and convinced them later—all the more so in that they saw in him the very ideal that he strove to set before them. He was, moreover, half a heretic, and Vincent had been warned to have nothing to do with him. But the new rector had his own ideas on the subject, and the ill-assorted pair soon became very good friends. The change in the young man's mode of life was gradual.
His first step was to be reconciled to the Church, his second to begin to interest himself in the poor. The whole town was in a stir. Who was this priest who had so suddenly come among them, so self-forgetful, so simple, so unassuming, yet whose influence was so strong with all classes? Having heard people speak of the wonderful eloquence of M.
Vincent, this man came one day out of curiosity to hear him preach. Surprised and touched in spite of himself, he determined to make the preacher's acquaintance and, hastening into his presence, flung himself on his knees before him. The Count, profoundly struck by the contrast between this man's life and his own—the one so powerful for good, and the other so strong for evil—vowed to mend his ways.
And he kept his word. One by one he sold his estates to find the wherewithal for Vincent's schemes of charity, and he would have stripped himself of all that he had, had not Vincent himself forbidden it. His sword, which had served him in all his duels, and to which he was very much attached, he broke in pieces on a rock. His great chateau, the walls of which had rung to the sound of wild carousals, was now thrown open to the sick and the poor, whom the once-dreaded Count insisted on serving with his own hands.
