(The Introito of the Mass).

The Cure of Althausen was reputed to be chaste.  Was he so really?  To tell the truth, I never believed him so; at thirty men are not chaste; they may try to be so; they rarely succeed.  However that might be, he was a singular man.

He had a profound reverence for common sense, and it was said that he taught a strange doctrine to his flock; for example, that a day of work was more pleasing to God than a day of prayer; that the temples were for those who labour not, and that a good action was well worth a mass.

He maintained too that we purchase nothing with money in the other world, and that the coins, so appreciated among ourselves, have no currency beyond the grave, and a hundred other oddities of this kind, which in the good old times would have brought him to the stake.  The Bishop had severely reprimanded him for all these heresies; but he seemed to pay no attention to it.  Every Sunday, from the height of his pulpit, he continued to brave shamelessly the thunders of his Bishop and the thunders of heaven.

I went one day to hear him.  His voice was sweet, persuasive, with a clear and harmonious tone.  He said simply:  “Love one another.  That is the true religion of Christ.  Love one another! everything is there:  religion, philosophy and morality.  Charity, properly understood, that which comes from the heart, is more pleasing to God than all the prayers.  There are people who in order to pray neglect their home duties, their duties as wife and as mother.  To them, I say of a truth, God remains deaf.  He wills, before aught else, that you should fulfil your duties to your own.  Every prayer which causes another to suffer is an impiety.”  Such was pretty near the essence of his sermons:  they were short and simple.  No great sonorous words, no pompous digressions, no Latin quotations which no one would have understood, no declamations on Our Lady of Lourdes or of La Salotte, on the miracle of Roses or the Immaculate Conception.

Thus he placed himself on a level with the simple souls who heard him, addressed himself only to their good sense and to their heart, and did not waste their time.  He thought that after having worked hard throughout the week, it was well to spend the Sunday in rest and not in fresh fatigue.

But that which struck me most in him was his intelligent and expressive countenance, and I was astonished that a man hall-marked with such originality, should consent to vegetate, obscure and future-less, in the care of a poor village.

They said he was chaste.  In truth that must be a task more arduous for him than for any other, for he bore on his face the impress of ardent passions.  A disciple of Lavater would doubtless have sought for and found the secret of hidden dramas in the fine pale face.  From his looks, now full of feverish ardour, now laden with sweet caresses, like the limpid eyes of a bride, the desires of the flesh in rebellion against deadly duty, seemed to burst forth with bold prolific thoughts.