y ideas in some tissue of absurdity. With
an inveterate habit of being over polite, as priests generally are, I
am too anxious to detect what the person I am talking with would
like said to him. My attention, when I am conversing with any one,
is engrossed in trying to guess at his ideas, and, from excess of
deference, to anticipate him in the expression of them. This is based
upon the supposition that very few men are so far unconcerned as to
their own ideas as not to be annoyed when one differs from them. I
only express myself freely with people whose opinions I know to sit
lightly upon them, and who look down upon everything with good-natured
contempt. My correspondence will be a disgrace to me if it should be
published after my death. It is a perfect torture for me to write a
letter. I can understand a person airing his talents before ten as
before ten thousand persons, but before one! Before beginning to
write, I hesitate and reflect, and make out a rough copy of what I
shall say; very often I go to sleep over it. A person need only look
at these letters with their heavy wording and abrupt sentences to see
that they were composed in a state of torpor which borders on sleep.
Reading over what I have written, I see that it is poor stuff, and
that I have said many things which I cannot vouch for. In despair, I
fasten down the envelope, with the feeling that I have posted a letter
which is beneath criticism.

In short, all my defects are those of the young ecclesiastical student
of Treguier. I was born to be a priest, as others are born to be
soldiers and lawyers. The very fact of my being successful in my
studies was a proof of it. What was the good of learning Latin so
thoroughly if it was not for the Church? A peasant, noticing all my
dictionaries upon one occasion, observed: "These, I suppose, are the
books which people study when they are preparing for the priesthood."
As a matter of fact, all those who studied at school at all were in
training for the ecclesiastical profession. The priestly order stood
on a par with the nobility: "When you meet a noble," I have heard it
observed, "you salute him, because he represents the king; when you
meet a priest, you salute him because he represents God." To make a
priest was regarded as the greatest of good works; and the elderly
spinsters who had a little money thought that they could not find
a better use for it than in paying the college fees of a poor but
hard-working