he came to live in
the _hotellerie_ he was savagely unhappy. An egoist he was, a thinker,
a man who longed to lay hold of something beyond this world, but who
had not been able to do so. Even his desire to find rest in a religion
seemed to me to have greed in it, to have something in it that was
akin to avarice. He was a human storm, Domini, as well as a human fire.
Think! what a man to be cast by the world--which he knew as they know it
only who are voracious for life and free--into my quiet existence.

"Very soon he began to show himself to me as he was, with a sort of
fearlessness that was almost impudent. The conditions of our two lives
in the monastery threw us perpetually together in a curious isolation.
And the Reverend Pere, Domini, the Reverend Pere, set my feet in the
path of my own destruction. On the day after the stranger had arrived
the Reverend Pere sent for me to his private room, and said to me,
'Our new guest is in a very unhappy state. He has been attracted by our
peace. If we can bring peace to him it will be an action acceptable
to God. You will be much with him. Try to do him good. He is not a
Catholic, but no matter. He wishes to attend the services in the chapel.
He may be influenced. God may have guided his feet to us, we cannot
tell. But we can act--we can pray for him. I do not know how long he
will stay. It may be for only a few days or for the whole summer. It
does not matter. Use each day well for him. Each day may be his last
with us.' I went out from the Reverend Pere full of enthusiasm, feeling
that a great, a splendid interest had come into my life, an interest
such as it had never held before.

"Day by day I was with this man. Of course there were many hours when
we were apart, the hours when I was at prayer in the chapel or occupied
with study. But each day we passed much time together, generally in the
garden. Scarcely any visitors came, and none to stay, except, from time
to time, a passing priest, and once two young men from Tunis, one of
whom had an inclination to become a novice. And this man, as I have
said, began to show himself to me with a tremendous frankness.

"Domini, he was suffering under what I suppose would be called an
obsession, an immense domination such as one human being sometimes
obtains over another. At that time I had never realised that there were
such dominations. Now I know that there are, and, Domini, that they can
be both terrible and splendid. He was d