XXIX.

OTHER MEETINGS.

“There was no seduction on her part or on mine:  love simply came, and I was her lover before I had even thought that I could become so.”

  MAXIME DU CAMP (Memoires d’un suicide).

They saw one another again very soon:  sometimes on the road which leads to the little chapel of Saint Anne, sometimes behind the village gardens, other times on the high-road lined with poplars.  From the furthest point at which he caught sight of her dress or her large straw-hat, trimmed with red ribbon, he trembled and became pale.

The first time he quickened his pace as he passed her, as though he were afraid of being retained by a force stronger than his own will, or perhaps from fear of ridicule, and he bowed to her as one bows to a queen.

She returned his bow graciously, and that was all.  He had his sum of happiness for the rest of the day.

The second time they met, they had both thought so much of one another that they accosted one another like old acquaintances.  The heart of each had broken the ice and made all the advances before they had taken the first steps.  The young girl had read in the priest’s eyes the wish to accost her, and he saw that he would be welcome.

Was anything more necessary?  Therefore, mutually content, when they separated, they each had the desire to see the other again.

It was very often then that they saw one another; but especially at the morning Masses; then, when he turned towards the nave, and raising his look towards the gallery encountered hers, he asked no other joy from heaven.

XXX.

SERAPHIC LOVE.

“How many times does it not occur to me to blush at my tastes? to hide them from myself? to feign with myself that I have them not? to find some covering for them beneath which I conceal them, in order to play a part a little less foolish in my own conscience?”

  JULES SIMON (Le Devoir).

But one day the Cure awoke full of dismay.  The first intoxication had slightly dissipated, he had taken time to look closely within himself, and when he sought to analyze in cool blood this new and ravishing sensation, he saw the abyss beneath his feet.

“What! he said to himself, whither am I going?  What am I doing?  I, a priest, a minister of the altar, I should be at that point a slave of sin; I shall continue to cast myself from darkness to darkness until the definite and final fall.  Oh!  Lord, stop me, come to my aid; suffer not this shame and this crime.”

But he altered his mind.  When the devil has succeeded in bringing a soul to sin, there is no artifice he does not use to blind him beforehand, and to turn away his thought from everything capable of making him see the unhappy state in which he is.  That is what the Church teaches.