calls the Devil's
voice, and which is the voice of reason. Virtue? Of which do you speak,
fool? Without counting the _three theological_, there are fifty thousand
kinds of virtues. It is like happiness, institutions, reputations,
religions, morals, principles: Truth on this side the mount, error on that.

There are as many kinds of virtues as there are different peoples. History
swarms with virtuous people who have been so in their own way. Socrates was
virtuous, and yet what strange familiarities he allowed himself with the
young Alcibiades. The virtuous Brutus virtuously assassinated his father.
The virtuous Elizabeth of Hungary had herself whipped by her confessor, the
virtuous Conrad, and the virtuous Janicot doted on virtuous little boys;
and finally Monseigneur is virtuous, but his old lady friends look down and
smile when he talks of virtue.

See this priest of austere countenance and whitened hair. He too, during
long years, has believed in that virtue which forms his torment. Candid and
trustful, he felt the fervency of religion fill his heart from his youth.
He had faith, he was filled with the spirit of charity and love. He said
like the apostle: _Ubi charitas et amor, Deus ibi est_. And he believed
that God was with him, and that alone with God he was peacefully pursuing
his road. But he had counted without that troublesome guest who comes and
places himself as a third between the creature and the Creator, and who,
more powerful than the God of legend, quickly banishes him, for he is the
principle of life and the other is the principle of death; it is the
fruitful love and the other is the wasting barren love; it is present and
active, while the other is inert, dumb and in the clouds of your sickly
brain.

"It is in vain that in his successive halts from parish to parish, he has
resisted the thousand seductions which surround the priest, from the timid
gaze of the simple school-girl, smitten with a holy love for the young
curate, to the veiled smile of the languishing woman. In vain will he
attempt, like Fenelon formerly, to put the warmth of his heart and the
incitements of the flesh upon the wrong scent by carrying on a platonic
love with some chosen souls; what is the result in the end of his efforts
and his struggles? Now he is old; ought he not to be appeased? No, weighty
and imperious matter has regained the upper hand. He loves no longer, he is
not able to love any longer, but the fury urges him on.