those whose
sole desire has been to please Him; and they only who have done good
for sake of good, and as though He existed not; they only who have
loved virtue more than they loved God Himself, shall be allowed to
stand by His side." But, after all, the genuine seeker after truth
knows that what seemed true yesterday is to-day discovered to be only a
milestone on the road; and all who value truth will be glad to listen
to a man who, differing from them perhaps, yet tells them what seems
true to him. And whereas in the "Treasure of the Humble" he looked on
life through a veil of poetry and dream, here he stands among his
fellow-men, no longer trying to "express the inexpressible," but, in
all simplicity, to tell them what he sees.

"Above all, let us never forget that an act of goodness is in itself an
act of happiness. It is the flower of a long inner life of joy and
contentment; it tells of peaceful hours and days on the sunniest
heights of our soul." This thought lies at the root of his whole
philosophy--goodness, happiness, love, supporting each other,
intertwined, rewarding each other. "Let us not think virtue will
crumble, though God Himself seem unjust. Where could the virtue of man
find more everlasting foundation than in the seeming injustice of God?"
Strange that the man who has written these words should have spent all
his school life at a Jesuit college, subjected to its severe,
semi-monastic discipline; compelled, at the end of his stay, to go,
with the rest of his fellows, through the customary period of
"retreat," lasting ten days, when the most eloquent of the fathers
would, one after the other, deliver sermons terrific to boyish
imagination, sermons whose unvarying burden was Hell and the wrath of
God--to be avoided only by becoming a Jesuit priest. Out of the
eighteen boys in the "rhetorique" class, eleven eagerly embraced this
chance of escape from damnation. As for M. Maeterlinck
himself--fortunately a day-boarder only--one can fancy him wandering
home at night, along the canal banks, in the silence broken only by the
pealing of church bells, brooding over these mysteries ... but how long
a road must the man have travelled who, having been taught the God of
Fra Angelico, himself arrives at the conception of a "God who sits
smiling on a mountain, and to whom our gravest offences are only as the
naughtiness of puppies playing on the hearth-rug."

His environment, no less than his schooling, helped to