for the first time Death laid his staff upon my enchantment, and I
understood many things that had been only words to me hitherto. Looking
back, it seemed to me that I had never done anything except for myself
all my days. I left the world. In due time I became a priest and lived
in my own country. But my worldly experience and my secular education
had given to my opinions a turn too liberal for the place where my work
was laid. I was soon advised concerning this by those in authority over
me. And since they could not change me and I could not change them,
yet wished to work and to teach, the New World was suggested, and I
volunteered to give the rest of my life to missions. It was soon found
that some one was needed here, and for this little place I sailed, and
to these humble people I have dedicated my service. They are pastoral
creatures of the soil. Their vineyard and cattle days are apt to be like
the sun and storm around them--strong alike in their evil and in
their good. All their years they live as children--children with men's
passions given to them like deadly weapons, unable to measure the harm
their impulses may bring. Hence, even in their crimes, their hearts will
generally open soon to the one great key of love, while civilization
makes locks which that key cannot always fit at the first turn. And
coming to know this," said Padre Ignazio, fixing his eyes steadily upon
Gaston, "you will understand how great a privilege it is to help such
people, and hour the sense of something accomplished--under God--should
bring contentment with renunciation."

"Yes," said Gaston Villere. Then, thinking of himself, "I can understand
it in a man like you."

"Do not speak of me at all!" exclaimed the padre, almost passionately.
"But pray Heaven that you may find the thing yourself some day
--contentment with renunciation--and never let it go."

"Amen!" said Gaston, strangely moved.

"That is the whole of my story," the priest continued, with no more
of the recent stress in his voice. "And now I have talked to you about
myself quite enough. But you must have my confession." He had now
resumed entirely his half-playful tone. "I was just a little mistaken,
you see too self-reliant, perhaps--when I supposed, in my first
missionary ardor, that I could get on without any remembrance of the
world at all. I found that I could not. And so I have taught the old
operas to my choir--such parts of them as are within our compass and