I was at this time so far removed from my old Brittany masters in respect to disposition, intellectual culture and study that conversation between us had become almost impossible.  One of them suspected something, and said to me:  “I have always thought that you were being overdone in the way of study.”  A habit which I had acquired of reciting the psalms in Hebrew from a small manuscript of my own which I used as a breviary, surprised them very much.  They were half inclined to ask me if I was a Jew.  My mother guessed all that was taking place without quite understanding it.  I continued, as in my childhood, to take long walks into the country with her.  One day, we sat down in the valley of Guindy, near the Chapelle des Cinq Plaies, by the side of the spring.  For hours I read by her side, without raising my eyes from the book, which was a very harmless one—­M. de Bonald’s Recherches Philosophiques. Nevertheless the book displeased her, and she snatched it away from me, feeling that books of the same description, if not this particular one, were what she had to dread.

Upon the 6th of September, 1845, I wrote to M. ——­, my director, the following letter, a copy of which I have found among my papers, and which I reproduce without in any way attenuating its somewhat inconsistent and feverish tone:—­

“SIR,—­Having had to make two or three journeys at the beginning of the vacation, I have been unable to correspond with you as early as I could have wished.  I was none the less urgently in need of unbosoming myself to you with regard to pangs which increase in intensity each day, and which I feel all the keener because there is no one here to whom I can confide them.  What ought to make for my happiness causes me the deepest sorrow.  An imperious sense of duty compels me to concentrate my thoughts upon myself, in order to spare pain to those who surround me with their affection, and who would moreover be quite incapable of understanding my perplexity.  Their kindness and soothing words cut me to the quick.  Oh, if they only knew what was going on in the recesses of my heart!  Since my stay here I have acquired some important data towards the solution of the great problem which is preoccupying my mind.  Several circumstances have, to begin with, made me realise the greatness of the sacrifice which God required of me, and into what an abyss the course which my conscience prescribes must plunge me.  It is useless to describe them to you in detail, as, after all, considerations of this kind can be of no weight in the resolution which has to be taken.  To have abandoned a path which I had selected from my childhood, and which led without danger to the pure and noble aims which I had set before myself, in order to tread another along which I could discern nothing but uncertainty and disappointment; to have disregarded the opinion which will have only blame in store for what is really an honest act on my part, would have been a small