Such was the manner in which he had ascended step by step to the priesthood.  And here his recollections thronged more quickly on him, softer, still warm with heavenly joy.  Each year he had drawn nearer to God.  His vacations had been spent in holy fashion at an uncle’s, in confessions every day and communions twice a week.  He would lay fasts upon himself, hide rock-salt inside his trunk, and kneel on it with bared knees for hours together.  At recreation time he remained in chapel, or went up to the room of one of the directors, who told him pious and extraordinary stories.  Then, as the fast of the Holy Trinity drew nigh, he was rewarded beyond all measure, overwhelmed by the stirring emotion which pervades all seminaries on the eve of ordinations.  This was the great festival of all, when the sky opened to allow the elect to rise another step nearer unto God.  For a fortnight in advance he imposed a bread and water diet on himself.  He closed his window blinds so that he might not see the daylight at all, and he prostrated himself in the gloom to implore Jesus to accept his sacrifice.  During the last four days he suffered torturing pangs, terrible scruples, which would force him from his bed in the middle of the night to knock at the door of some strange priest giving the Retreat—­some barefooted Carmelite, or often a converted Protestant respecting whom some wonderful story was current.  To him he would make at great length a general confession of his whole life in a voice choking with sobs.  Absolution alone quieted him, refreshed him, as if he had enjoyed a bath of grace.

On the morning of the great day he felt wholly white; and so vividly was he conscious of his whiteness that he seemed to himself to shed light around him.  The seminary bell rang out in clear notes, while all the scents of June—­the perfume of blossoming stocks, of mignonette and of heliotropes—­came over the lofty courtyard wall.  In the chapel relatives were waiting in their best attire, so deeply moved that the women sobbed behind their veils.  Next came the procession—­the deacons about to receive their priesthood in golden chasubles, the sub-deacons in dalmatics, those in minor orders and the tonsured with their surplices floating on their shoulders and their black birettas in their hands.  The organ rolled diffusing the flutelike notes of a canticle of joy.  At the altar, the bishop officiated, staff in hand, assisted by two canons.  All the Chapter were there, the priests of all the parishes thronged thick amid a dazzling wealth of apparel, a flaring of gold beneath a broad ray of sunlight falling from a window in the nave.  The epistle over, the ordination began.