That night Abbe Mouret remained for over an hour on his knees in the empty church.  With folded hands and eyes fixed on the golden Virgin rising planet-like amid the verdure, he sought the drowsiness of ecstasy, the appeasement of the strange discomfort he had felt that day.  But he failed to find the semi-somnolence of prayer with the delightful ease he knew so well.  However glorious and pure Mary might reveal herself, her motherhood, the maturity of her charms, and the bare infant she bore upon her arm, disquieted him.  It seemed as if in heaven itself there were a repetition of the exuberant life, through which he had been moving since the morning.  Like the vines of the stony slopes, like the trees of the Paradou, like the human troop of Artauds, Mary suggested the blossoming, the begetting of life.  Prayer came but slowly to his lips; fancies made his mind wander.  He perceived things he had never seen before—­the gentle wave of her chestnut hair, the rounded swell of her rosy throat.  She had to assume a sterner air and overwhelm him with the splendour of her sovereign power to bring him back to the unfinished sentences of his broken prayer.  At last the sight of her golden crown, her golden mantle, all the golden sheen which made of her a mighty princess, reduced him once more to slavish submission, and his prayer again flowed evenly, and his mind became wrapped in worship.

In this ecstatic trance, half asleep, half awake, he remained till eleven o’clock, heedless of his aching knees, fancying himself suspended in mid air, rocked to and fro like a child, and yielding to restful slumber, though conscious of some unknown weight that oppressed his heart.  Meanwhile the church around him filled with shadows, the lamp grew dim, and the lofty sprays of leafage darkened the tall Virgin’s varnished face.

When the clock, about to strike, gave out a rending whine, a shudder passed through Abbe Mouret.  He had not hitherto felt the chill of the church upon his shoulders, but now he was shivering from head to foot.  As he crossed himself a memory swiftly flashed through the stupor of his wakening—­the chattering of his teeth recalled to him the nights he had spent on the floor of his cell before the Sacred Heart of Mary, when his whole frame would quiver with fever.  He rose up painfully, displeased with himself.  As a rule, he would leave the altar untroubled in his flesh and with Mary’s sweet breath still fresh upon his brow.  That night, however, as he took the lamp to go up to his room he felt as if his throbbing temples were bursting.  His prayer had not profited him; after a transient alleviation he still experienced the burning glow which had been rising in his heart and brain since morning.  When he reached the sacristy door, he turned and mechanically raised the lamp to take a last look at the tall Virgin.  But she was now shrouded in the deep shadows falling from the rafters, buried in the foliage around her whence only the golden cross upon her crown emerged.