ad been a choir boy at eight years old, and whose expenses
at the seminary were defrayed by a lady who watched over him. He was
always laughing, he rejoiced beforehand at the anticipated emoluments of
his career; twelve hundred francs of stipend, a vicarage at the end of a
garden, presents, invitations to dinners, little profits from weddings,
and baptismal and burial fees. That young fellow must indeed be happy in
his parish.

The feeling of melancholy regret evoked by this recollection surprised
Abbe Mouret extremely. Was he not happy, too? Until that day he had
regretted nothing, wished for nothing, envied nothing. Even as he
searched himself at that very moment he failed to find any cause for
bitterness. He believed himself the same as in the early days of his
deaconship, when the obligatory perusal of his breviary at certain
stated hours had filled his days with continuous prayer. No doubts had
tormented him; he had prostrated himself before the mysteries he could
not understand; he had sacrificed his reason, which he despised, with
the greatest ease. When he left the seminary, he had rejoiced at finding
himself a stranger among his fellowmen, no longer walking like them,
carrying his head differently, possessed of the gestures, words, and
opinions of a being apart. He had felt emasculated, nearer to the
angels, cleansed of sexuality. It had almost made him proud to belong
no longer to his species, to have been brought up for God and carefully
purged of all human grossness by a jealously watchful training. Again,
it had seemed to him as if for years he had been dwelling in holy
oil, prepared with all due rites, which had steeped his flesh in
beatification. His limbs, his brain, had lost material substance to
gain in soulfulness, impregnated with a subtle vapour which, at times,
intoxicated him and dizzied him as if the earth had suddenly failed
beneath his feet. He displayed the fears, the unwittingness, the open
candour of a cloistered maiden. He sometimes remarked with a smile that
he was prolonging his childhood, under the impression that he was still
quite little, retaining the same sensations, the same ideas, the same
opinions as in the past. At six years old, for instance, he had known as
much of God as he knew at twenty-five; in prayer the inflexions of
his voice were still the same, and he yet took a childish pleasure in
folding his hands quite correctly. The world too seemed to him the same
as he had seen