in former days when his mother led him by the hand.
He had been born a priest, and a priest he had grown up. Whenever he
displayed before La Teuse some particularly gross ignorance of life, she
would stare him in the face, astounded, and remark with a strange smile
that 'he was Mademoiselle Desiree's brother all over.'

In all his existence he could only recall one shock of shame. It
had happened during his last six months at the seminary, between his
deaconship and priesthood. He had been ordered to read the work of Abbe
Craisson, the superior of the great seminary at Valence: '_De rebus
Veneris ad usum confessariorum_.' And he had risen from this book
terrified and choking with sobs. That learned casuistry, dealing so
fully with the abominations of mankind, descending to the most monstrous
examples of vice, violated, as it were, all his virginity of body
and mind. He felt himself for ever befouled. Yet every time he heard
confessions he inevitably recurred to that catechism of shame. And
though the obscurities of dogma, the duties of his ministry, and the
death of all free will within him left him calm and happy at being
nought but the child of God, he retained, in spite of himself, a carnal
taint of the horrors he must needs stir up; he was conscious of an
ineffaceable stain, deep down somewhere in his being, which might some
day grow larger and cover him with mud.

The moon was rising behind the Garrigue hills. Abbe Mouret, still more
and more feverish, opened the window and leaned out upon his elbows,
that he might feel upon his face the coolness of the night. He could no
longer remember at what time exactly this illness had come upon him.
He recollected, however, that in the morning, while saying mass, he had
been quite calm and restful. It must have been later, perhaps during
his long walk in the sun, or while he shivered under the trees of the
Paradou, or while stifling in Desiree's poultry-yard. And then he lived
through the day again.

Before him stretched the vast plain, more direful still beneath the
pallid light of the oblique moonbeams. The olive and almond trees showed
like grey spots amid the chaos of rocks spreading to the sombre row of
hills on the horizon. There were big splotches of gloom, bumpy ridges,
blood-hued earthy pools in which red stars seemed to contemplate one
another, patches of chalky light, suggestive of women's garments cast
off and disclosing shadowy forms which slumbered in the hol