XV

Abbe Mouret’s bedroom, which occupied a corner of the vicarage, was a spacious one, having two large square windows; one of which opened above Desiree’s farmyard, whilst the other overlooked the village, the valley beyond, the belt of hills, the whole landscape.  The yellow-curtained bed, the walnut chest of drawers, and the three straw-bottomed chairs seemed lost below that lofty ceiling with whitewashed joists.  A faint tartness, the somewhat musty odour of old country houses, ascended from the tiled and ruddled floor that glistened like a mirror.  On the chest of drawers a tall statuette of the Immaculate Conception rose greyly between some porcelain vases which La Teuse had filled with white lilac.

Abbe Mouret set his lamp on the edge of the chest of drawers before the Virgin.  He felt so unwell that he determined to light the vine-stem fire which was laid in readiness.  He stood there, tongs in hand, watching the kindling wood, his face illuminated by the flame.  The house beneath slumbered in unbroken stillness.  The silence filled his ears with a hum, which grew into a sound of whispering voices.  Slowly and irresistibly these voices mastered him and increased the feeling of anxiety which had almost choked him several times that day.  What could be the cause of such mental anguish?  What could be the strange trouble which had slowly grown within him and had now become so unbearable?  He had not fallen into sin.  It seemed as if but yesterday he had left the seminary with all his ardent faith, and so fortified against the world that he moved among men beholding God alone.  And, suddenly, he fancied himself in his cell at five o’clock in the morning, the hour for rising.  The deacon on duty passed his door, striking it with his stick, and repeating the regulation summons—­

‘Benedicamus Domino!’

‘Deo gratias!’ he answered half asleep, with his eyes still swollen with slumber.

And he jumped out upon his strip of carpet, washed himself, made his bed, swept his room, and refilled his little pitcher.  He enjoyed this petty domestic work while the morning air sent a thrilling shiver throughout his frame.  He could hear the sparrows in the plane-trees of the court-yard, rising at the same time as himself with a deafening noise of wings and notes—­their way of saying their prayers, thought he.  Then he went down to the meditation room, and stayed there on his knees for half an hour after prayers, to con that reflection of St. Ignatius:  ’What profit be it to a man to gain the whole world if he lose his soul?’ A subject, this, fertile in good resolutions, which impelled him to renounce all earthly goods, and dwell on that fond dream of a desert life, beneath the solitary wealth and luxury of a vast blue sky.  When ten minutes had passed, his bruised knees became so painful that his whole being slowly swooned into ecstasy, in which he pictured himself as a mighty conqueror, the master