And he was respected by the Catholics of both sorts,--by those who did not and by those who did adhere with strictness to the letter of their laws of religion.
With the former he did his duty, perhaps without much enthusiasm.
He preached to them, if they would come and listen to him.

He christened them, confessed them, and absolved them from their sins,--of course, after due penitence.

But he lived with them, too, in a friendly way, pronouncing no anathemas against them, because they were not as attentive to their religious exercises as they might have been.

But with those who took a comfort in sacred things, who liked to go to early masses in cold weather, to be punctual at ceremonies, to say the rosary as surely as the evening came, who knew and performed all the intricacies of fasting as ordered by the bishop, down to the refinement of an egg more or less, in the whole Lent, or the absence of butter from the day's cookery,--with these he had all that enthusiasm which such people like to encounter in their priest.

We may say, therefore, that he was a wise man,--and probably, on the whole, a good man; that he did good service in his parish, and helped his people along in their lives not inefficiently.