on duty passed his door, striking it with his stick, and repeating the
regulation summons--

'_Benedicamus Domino_!'

'_Deo gratias_!' he answered half asleep, with his eyes still swollen
with slumber.

And he jumped out upon his strip of carpet, washed himself, made his
bed, swept his room, and refilled his little pitcher. He enjoyed this
petty domestic work while the morning air sent a thrilling shiver
throughout his frame. He could hear the sparrows in the plane-trees
of the court-yard, rising at the same time as himself with a deafening
noise of wings and notes--their way of saying their prayers, thought he.
Then he went down to the meditation room, and stayed there on his knees
for half an hour after prayers, to con that reflection of St. Ignatius:
'What profit be it to a man to gain the whole world if he lose his
soul?' A subject, this, fertile in good resolutions, which impelled him
to renounce all earthly goods, and dwell on that fond dream of a desert
life, beneath the solitary wealth and luxury of a vast blue sky. When
ten minutes had passed, his bruised knees became so painful that his
whole being slowly swooned into ecstasy, in which he pictured himself as
a mighty conqueror, the master of an immense empire, flinging down his
crown, breaking his sceptre, trampling under foot unheard-of wealth,
chests of gold, floods of jewels, and rich stuffs embroidered with
precious stones, before going to bury himself in some Thebais, clothed
in rough drugget that rasped his back. Mass, however, snatched him from
these heated fancies, upon which he looked back as upon some beautiful
reality which might have been his lot in ancient times; and then, his
communion made, he chanted the psalm for the day unconscious of any
other voice than his own, which rang out with crystal purity, flying
upward till it reached the very ear of the Lord.

When he returned to his room he ascended the stairs step by step, as
advised by St. Bonaventura and St. Thomas Aquinas. His gait was slow,
his mien grave; he kept his head bowed as he walked along, finding
ineffable delight in complying with the most trifling regulations. Next
came breakfast. It was pleasant in the refectory to see the hunks of
bread and the glasses of white wine, set out in rows. He had a good
appetite, and was of a joyous mood. He would say, for instance, that
the wine was truly Christian--a daring allusion to the water which the
bursar was taxed with putting in the b