you call me. I shall be
but a mouth to sing your praises, a pair of spotless wings to cradle
you in your journeys through the heavens. O death! death! Virgin, most
venerable, grant me the death of all! I will love you for the death of
my body, the death of all that lives and multiplies. I will consummate
with you the sole marriage that my heart desires. I will ascend, ever
higher and higher, till I have reached the brasier in which you shine
in splendour. There one beholds a mighty planet, an immense white rose,
whose every petal glows like a moon, a silver throne whence you beam
with such a blaze of innocence that heaven itself is all illumined by
the gleam of your veil alone. All that is white, the early dawns, the
snow on inaccessible peaks, the lilies barely opening, the water of
hidden, unknown springs, the milky sap of the plants untouched by
the sun, the smiles of maidens, the souls of children dead in their
cradles--all rains upon your white feet. And I will rise to your mouth
like a subtle flame; I will enter into you by your parted lips, and
the bridal will be fulfilled, while the archangels are thrilled by our
joyfulness. Oh, to be maiden, to love in maidenhood, to preserve
amid the sweetest kisses one's maiden whiteness! To possess all love,
stretched on the wings of swans, in a sky of purity, in the arms of
a mistress of light, whose caresses are but raptures of the soul! Oh,
there lies the perfection, the super-human dream, the yearning which
shatters my very bones, the joy which bears me up to heaven! O Mary,
Vessel of Election, rid me of all that is human in me, so that you may
fearlessly surrender to me the treasure of your maidenhood!'

And then Abbe Mouret, felled by fever, his teeth chattering, swooned
away on the floor.

BOOK II

I

Through calico curtains, carefully drawn across the two large windows,
a pale white light like that of breaking day filtered into the room. It
was a lofty and spacious room, fitted up with old Louis XV. furniture,
the woodwork painted white, the upholstery showing a pattern of red
flowers on a leafy ground. On the piers above the doors on either side
of the alcove were faded paintings still displaying the rosy flesh
of flying Cupids, whose games it was now impossible to follow. The
wainscoting with oval panels, the folding doors, the rounded ceiling
(once sky-blue and framed with scrolls, medallions, and bows of
flesh-coloured ribbons), had all faded