o a certain
quiet hill, a long way distant in the fields. Covered with a cloak (I
could not be delirious, for I had sense and recollection to put on warm
clothing), forth I set. The bells of a church arrested me in passing;
they seemed to call me in to the _salut_, and I went in. Any solemn
rite, any spectacle of sincere worship, any opening for appeal to God
was as welcome to me then as bread to one in extremity of want. I knelt
down with others on the stone pavement. It was an old solemn church,
its pervading gloom not gilded but purpled by light shed through
stained glass.

Few worshippers were assembled, and, the _salut_ over, half of them
departed. I discovered soon that those left remained to confess. I did
not stir. Carefully every door of the church was shut; a holy quiet
sank upon, and a solemn shade gathered about us. After a space,
breathless and spent in prayer, a penitent approached the confessional.
I watched. She whispered her avowal; her shrift was whispered back; she
returned consoled. Another went, and another. A pale lady, kneeling
near me, said in a low, kind voice:--"Go you now, I am not quite
prepared."

Mechanically obedient, I rose and went. I knew what I was about; my
mind had run over the intent with lightning-speed. To take this step
could not make me more wretched than I was; it might soothe me.

The priest within the confessional never turned his eyes to regard me;
he only quietly inclined his ear to my lips. He might be a good man,
but this duty had become to him a sort of form: he went through it with
the phlegm of custom. I hesitated; of the formula of confession I was
ignorant: instead of commencing, then, with the prelude usual, I
said:--"Mon pere, je suis Protestante."

He directly turned. He was not a native priest: of that class, the cast
of physiognomy is, almost invariably, grovelling: I saw by his profile
and brow he was a Frenchman; though grey and advanced in years, he did
not, I think, lack feeling or intelligence. He inquired, not unkindly,
why, being a Protestant, I came to him?

I said I was perishing for a word of advice or an accent of comfort. I
had been living for some weeks quite alone; I had been ill; I had a
pressure of affliction on my mind of which it would hardly any longer
endure the weight.

"Was it a sin, a crime?" he inquired, somewhat startled. I reassured
him on this point, and, as well as I could, I showed him the mere
outline of my experience.

He