How many delightful days like these had he not spent in that ancient convent of old Plassans, where abode the aroma of centuries of piety!  For five years had the days followed one another, flowing on with the unvarying murmur of limpid water.  In this present hour he recalled a thousand little incidents which moved him.  He remembered going with his mother to purchase his first outfit, his two cassocks, his two waist sashes, his half-dozen bands, his eight pairs of socks, his surplice, and his three-cornered hat.  And how his heart had beaten that mild October evening when the seminary door had first closed behind him!  He had gone thither at twenty, after his school years, seized with a yearning to believe and love.  The very next day he had forgotten all, as if he had fallen into a long sleep in that big silent house.  He once more saw the narrow cell in which he had lived through his two years as student of philosophy—­a little hutch with only a bed, a table, and a chair, divided from the other cells by badly fitted partitions, in a vast hall containing about fifty similar little dens.  And he again saw the cell he had dwelt in three years longer while in the theology class —­a larger one, with an armchair, a dressing-table, and a bookcase—­a happy room full of the dreams which his faith had evoked.  Down those endless passages, up those stairs of stone, in all sorts of nooks, sudden inspirations, unexpected aid had come to him.  From the lofty ceilings fell the voices of guardian angels.  There was not a flagstone in the halls, not an ashlar of the walls, not a bough of the plane-trees, but it spoke to him of the delights of his contemplative life, his lispings of tenderness, his gradual initiation, the favours vouchsafed him in return for self-bestowal, all that happiness of divine first love.

On such and such a day, on awaking, he had beheld a bright flood of light which had steeped him in joy.  On such and such an evening as he closed the door of his cell he had felt warm hands clasping his neck so lovingly that he had lost consciousness, and had afterwards found himself on the floor weeping and choked by sobs.  Again, at other times, especially in the little archway leading to the chapel, he had surrendered himself to supple arms which raised him from the ground.  All heaven had then been concerned in him, had moved round him, and imparted to his slightest actions a peculiar sense, an astonishing perfume, which seemed to cling faintly to his clothes, to his very skin.  And again, he remembered the Thursday walks.  They started at two o’clock for some verdant nook about three miles from Plassans.  Often they sought a meadow on the banks of the Viorne, where the gnarled willows steeped their leaves in the stream.  But he saw nothing—­neither the big yellow flowers in the meadow, nor the swallows sipping as they flew by, with wings lightly touching the surface of the little river.  Till six o’clock, seated in groups beneath the willows, his comrades and himself recited the Office of the Virgin in common, or read in pairs the ‘Little Hours,’ the book of prayers recommended to young seminarists, but not enjoined on them.