young peasant. When he came to be a priest, he became
their own child, their glory, and their honour. They followed him
in his career, and watched over his conduct with jealous care. As a
natural consequence of my assiduity in study I was destined for the
priesthood. Moreover, I was of sedentary habits and too weak of
muscle to distinguish myself in athletic sports. I had an uncle of a
Voltairian turn of mind, who did not at all approve of this. He was
a watchmaker, and had reckoned upon me to take on his business. My
successes were as gall and wormwood to him, for he quite saw that all
this store of Latin was dead against him, and that it would convert
me into a pillar of the Church which he disliked. He never lost an
opportunity of airing before me his favourite phrase, "a donkey loaded
with Latin." Afterwards, when my writings were published, he had his
triumph. I sometimes reproach myself for having contributed to the
triumph of M. Homais over his priest. But it cannot be helped, for
M. Homais is right. But for M. Homais we should all be burnt at the
stake. But as I have said, when one has been at great pains to learn
the truth, it is irritating to have to allow that the frivolous, who
could never be induced to read a line of St. Augustine or St. Thomas
Aquinas, are the true sages. It is hard to think that Gavroche and M.
Homais attain without an effort the alpine heights of philosophy.

My young compatriot and friend, M. Quellien, a Breton poet full of
raciness and originality, the only man of the present day whom I have
known to possess the faculty of creating myths, has described this
phase of my destiny in a very ingenious style. He says that my soul
will dwell, in the shape of a white sea-bird, around the ruined church
of St. Michel, an old building struck by lightning which stands above
Treguier. The bird will fly all night with plaintive cries around the
barricaded door and windows, seeking to enter the sanctuary, but not
knowing that there is a secret door. And so through all eternity
my unhappy spirit will moan, ceaselessly upon this hill. "It is
the spirit of a priest who wants to say mass," one peasant will
observe.--"He will never find a boy to serve it for him," will rejoin
another. And that is what I really am--an incomplete priest.
Quellien has very clearly discerned what will always be lacking in
my church--the chorister boy. My life is like a mass which has some
fatality hanging over it, a never-end