ong; but she did not force me into anything. Perhaps my love
for her led me more than I knew, brought me to the monastery door. The
passion of her life, the human passion, had been my father. After he was
dead the passion of her life was prayer for him. My love for her made me
share that passion, and the sharing of that passion eventually led me
to become a monk. I became as a child, a devotee of prayer. Oh!
Domini--think--I loved prayer--I loved it----"

His voice broke. When he stopped speaking Domini was again conscious of
the music in the city. She remembered that earlier in the night she had
thought of it as the music of a great festival.

"I resolved to enter the life of prayer, the most perfect life of
prayer. I resolved to become a 'religious.' It seemed to me that by so
doing I should be proving in the finest way my love for my mother. I
should be, in the strongest way, helping her. Her life was prayer for my
dead father and love for her children. By devoting myself to the life of
prayer I should show to her that I was as she was, as she had made me,
true son of her womb. Can you understand? I had a passion for my mother,
Domini--I had a passion. My brother tried to dissuade me from the
monastic life. He himself was going into business in Tunis. He wanted me
to join him. But I was firm. I felt driven towards the cloister then as
other men often feel driven towards the vicious life. The inclination
was irresistible. I yielded to it. I had to bid good-bye to my mother.
I told you--she was the passion of my life. And yet I hardly felt sad at
parting from her. Perhaps that will show you how I was then. It seemed
to me that we should be even closer together when I wore the monk's
habit. I was in haste to put it on. I went to the monastery of
El-Largani and entered it as a novice of the Trappistine order. I
thought in the great silence of the Trappists there would be more room
for prayer. When I left my home and went to El-Largani I took with me
one treasure only. Domini, it was the little wooden crucifix you pinned
upon the tent at Arba. My mother gave it to me, and I was allowed to
keep it. Everything else in the way of earthly possessions I, of course,
had to give up.

"You have never seen El-Largani, my home for nineteen years, my prison
for one. It is lonely, but not in the least desolate. It stands on a
high upland, and, from a distance, looks upon the sea. Far off there are
mountains. The land was a desert.