The priest-brother, cold and inveterate, was like the attorney for the crown.

The Cure was the clerk of the court, who could only echo the decisions of the Judge.

The constables were the machinery of the Law, and Jo Portugais was the unwilling witness, whose evidence would be the crux of the case.

The prisoner--he himself was prisoner and prisoner's counsel.
A good struggle was forward.
He had enraged the Abbe as much as he had delighted the Abbe's brother; for nothing gave the Seigneur such pleasure as the discomfiture of the Abbe Rossignol, chaplain and ordinary to the Archbishop of Quebec.

The genial, sympathetic nature of the Seigneur could not even be patient with the excessive piety of the churchman, who, in rigid righteousness, had thrashed him cruelly as a boy.