The morals of all these young people, left entirely to themselves and with no one to look after them, were irreproachable.  There were very few boarders at the Treguier College just then.  Most of the students who did not belong to the town boarded in private houses, and their parents used to bring them in on market day their provisions for the week.  I remember one of these houses, close to our own, in which several of my fellow-students lodged.  The mistress of it, who was an indefatigable housewife, died, and her husband, who at the best of times was no genius, drowned what little he had in the cider-cup every evening.  A little servant-maid, who was wonderfully intelligent, took the whole burden upon her shoulders.  The young students determined to help her, and so the house went on despite the old tippler.  I always heard my comrades speak very highly of this little servant, who was a model of virtue and who was gifted, moreover, with a very pleasing face.

The fact is that, according to my experience, all the allegations against the morality of the clergy are devoid of foundation.  I passed thirteen years of my life under the charge of priests, and I never saw anything approaching to a scandal; all the priests I have known have been good men.  Confession may possibly be productive of evil in some countries, but I never saw anything of the sort during my ecclesiastical experience.  The old-fashioned book which I used for making my examinations of conscience was innocence itself.  There was only one sin which excited my curiosity and made me feel uneasy.  I was afraid that I might have been guilty of it unawares.  I mustered up courage enough, one day, to ask my confessor what was meant by the phrase:  “To be guilty of simony in the collation of benefices.”  The good priest reassured me and told me that I could not have committed that sin.

Persuaded by my teachers of two absolute truths, the first, that no one who has any respect for himself can engage in any work that is not ideal—­and that all the rest is secondary, of no importance, not to say shameful, ignominia seculi—­and the second, that Christianity embodies everything which is ideal, I could not do otherwise than regard myself as destined for the priesthood.  This thought was not the result of reflection, impulse, or reasoning.  It came so to speak, of itself.  The possibility of a lay career never so much as occurred to me.  Having adopted with the utmost seriousness and docility the principles of my teachers, and having brought myself to consider all commercial and mercenary pursuits as inferior and degrading, and only fit for those who had failed in their studies, it was only natural that I should wish to be what they were.  They were my patterns in life, and my sole ambition was to be like them, professor at the College of Treguier, poor, exempt from all material cares, esteemed and respected like them.