They seemed to him of his own age, little girls such as he wished to meet with, little girls of heaven such as the little boys who die when seven years old have for eternal playmates in some nook of Paradise.  But even at this early age he was self-contained; and full of the exquisite bashfulness of adolescence he grew up without betraying the secret of his religious love.  Mary grew up with him, being invariably a year or two older than himself, as should always be the case with one’s chiefest friend.  When he was eighteen, she was twenty; she no longer kissed his forehead at night time, but stood a little further from him with folded arms, chastely smiling, ravishingly sweet.  And he—­he only named her now in a whisper, feeling as if he would faint each time the well-loved name passed his lips in prayer.  No more did he dream of childish games within the garden of heaven, but of continual contemplation before that white figure, whose perfect purity he feared to sully with his breath.  Even from his own mother did he conceal the fervour of his love for Mary.

Then, a few years later, at the seminary, his beautiful affection for her, seemingly so just, so natural, was disturbed by inward qualms.  Was the cult of Mary necessary for salvation?  Was he not robbing God by giving Mary a part, the greater part, of his love, his thoughts, his heart, his entire being?  Perplexing questions were these, provoking an inward struggle which increased his passion, riveted his bonds.  For he dived into all the subtleties of his affection, found unknown joys in discussing the lawfulness of his feelings.  The books treating of devotion to the Virgin brought him excuses, joyful raptures, a wealth of arguments which he repeated with prayerful fervour.  From them he learned how, in Mary, to be the slave of Jesus.  He went to Jesus through Mary.  He cited all kinds of proofs, he discriminated, he drew inferences.  Mary, whom Jesus had obeyed on earth, should be obeyed by all mankind; Mary still retained her maternal power in heaven, where she was the great dispenser of God’s treasures, the only one who could beseech Him, the only one who allotted the heavenly thrones; and thus Mary, a mere creature before God, but raised up to Him, became the human link between heaven and earth, the intermediary of every grace, of every mercy; and his conclusion always was that she should be loved above all else in God himself.  Another time he was attracted by more complicated theological curiosities:  the marriage of the celestial spouse, the Holy Ghost sealing the Vase of Election, making of the Virgin Mary an everlasting miracle, offering her inviolable purity to the devotion of mankind.  She was the Virgin overcoming all heresies, the irreconcilable foe of Satan, the new Eve of whom it had been foretold that she should crush the Serpent’s head, the august Gate of Grace, by which the Saviour had already entered once and through which He would come again at the Last Day—­a vague prophecy, allotting a yet larger future role to Mary, which threw Serge into a dreamy imagining of some immense expansion of divine love.