e could not, of course, learn them without effort, but
after he had really prayed earnestly, he found he could remember
things better. Then one day he learned the Lord's prayer. Long years
after, when he was an old man, he could still recall the exact spot in
his beautiful home where, as a little boy, he had first learned to
say, 'Our Father.' Etienne and his family belonged to the Roman
Catholic Church. On Sundays they went to the great cathedral of
Limoges; but the service there always seemed strange and far away to
Etienne.[41] The music, the chanting, the Latin words that were said
and sung by bishops and priests in their gorgeous robes, did not seem
to him to have anything to do with the quiet Voice that spoke to the
boy in the silence of his own heart.

When Etienne and his brothers were old enough they were sent to
several different colleges and schools. Their last place of
instruction was the celebrated College of the Oratorians at Lyons.
Among other things, the students of this College were taught to move
so quietly that fifty or a hundred boys went up or down the stone
steps of the College all together, without their feet making the least
noise.

Etienne tells us in his diary: 'as we were educated by Roman Catholics
and in their principles we were required to confess once a month,'
that is, to tell a priest whatever they had done that was wrong, and
receive the assurance of God's forgiveness from him.

The priest to whom Etienne regularly made his confession was 'a pious,
conscientious man,' who treated him with fatherly care. When the boy
told him of his puzzles, and asked how it could be necessary to
confess to any man, since God alone could forgive sins, he received a
kind, helpful answer. 'Yet,' he says, 'my reasoning faculties brought
me to the root of the matter; from created objects to the
Creator--from time to eternity.' After he was confirmed at College he
hoped that his heart would be changed and made different; but he found
that he was still much the same as before. Before leaving the College
he and the other students who were also departing received the
Sacrament of the Lord's Supper at Mass. This was to Etienne a very
solemn time. But, he says, as soon as he was out in the world again,
the remembrance of it faded away. He settled that he had no use for
religion in his life, and determined to live for pleasure and
happiness alone. 'I sought after happiness,' his diary says, 'in the
world's deli