One saw at times that his thoughts escaped in moments of forgetfulness from the clerical fetter.

Wild, wandering and licentious, they plunged with delight into the ocean of reverie.  They left far behind them on the misty shore our conventions, our prejudices and our follies, and all those toils of spider-web which beset and catch and destroy so well the silly crowd, and which we call social rules, opinion and propriety.

Then the priest was gone; the man alone remained, the man of thirty, robust and full of life and yearning for all the joys of life.  And beneath his gold-embroidered chasuble, near that altar laden with lustres and with flowers, amidst the floods of light and the floods of perfume, in that atmosphere saturated with the intoxicating waves of incense and the breath of maidens; surrounded by all those women, by all these girls on their knees before him or hanging on his lips; before all these modest or burning looks fixed upon his gaze, a strange sensation rose to his brain; the perspiration stood upon his forehead, he blushed and grew pale by turns; a shiver ran through his frame, and trying to subdue the ardour of his gaze, he turned towards the crowd of young girls, and said to them in a trembling voice: 

—­Dominus vobiscum.

—­Et cum spiritu tuo, answered the choir of maidens.  Oh, how willingly instead of the name of God would he have cast to them his heart.

II.

THE CONFESSIONAL.

“In the course of the holy missions to which I have consecrated a great portion of my life, I have often come across upright souls, disposed to make great progress in perfection, if they had found a skilful director.”

  The Rev.  Father J.B.  SCAROMELLI
  (The Spiritual Guide).

However, almost in spite of myself, I was interested in this young priest, and although disposed to believe that he was a knave like the rest, I was sensible of something in him so upright and so loyal that I was, from the very first, prejudiced in his favour.

And besides, these flashes of fiery passion which at times betrayed him, could they serve as an accusation against him?  Could one take offence at his not having completely stifled at thirty years the fierce passions of youth and his violent desires?  Was it not a proof on the contrary of his victorious struggles and of his energy?

And even though he should succumb before the imperious needs of potent nature, which would be the more culpable, he or the women who surrounded him, enveloped him with their gaze, encompassed him with their seductions; he or the husbands and fathers who seemed tacitly to say to him:  “You are young, ardent, fall of passion and vigour, there is my daughter, there is my wife, I hand them to you, receive their confessions, dive into their looks, read in their soul, listen month to month to their most secret confidences, but beware of touching their lips.”