which, at times, intoxicated him and dizzied him as if the earth had suddenly failed beneath his feet.  He displayed the fears, the unwittingness, the open candour of a cloistered maiden.  He sometimes remarked with a smile that he was prolonging his childhood, under the impression that he was still quite little, retaining the same sensations, the same ideas, the same opinions as in the past.  At six years old, for instance, he had known as much of God as he knew at twenty-five; in prayer the inflexions of his voice were still the same, and he yet took a childish pleasure in folding his hands quite correctly.  The world too seemed to him the same as he had seen in former days when his mother led him by the hand.  He had been born a priest, and a priest he had grown up.  Whenever he displayed before La Teuse some particularly gross ignorance of life, she would stare him in the face, astounded, and remark with a strange smile that ‘he was Mademoiselle Desiree’s brother all over.’

In all his existence he could only recall one shock of shame.  It had happened during his last six months at the seminary, between his deaconship and priesthood.  He had been ordered to read the work of Abbe Craisson, the superior of the great seminary at Valence:  ’De rebus Veneris ad usum confessariorum.’  And he had risen from this book terrified and choking with sobs.  That learned casuistry, dealing so fully with the abominations of mankind, descending to the most monstrous examples of vice, violated, as it were, all his virginity of body and mind.  He felt himself for ever befouled.  Yet every time he heard confessions he inevitably recurred to that catechism of shame.  And though the obscurities of dogma, the duties of his ministry, and the death of all free will within him left him calm and happy at being nought but the child of God, he retained, in spite of himself, a carnal taint of the horrors he must needs stir up; he was conscious of an ineffaceable stain, deep down somewhere in his being, which might some day grow larger and cover him with mud.

The moon was rising behind the Garrigue hills.  Abbe Mouret, still more and more feverish, opened the window and leaned out upon his elbows, that he might feel upon his face the coolness of the night.  He could no longer remember at what time exactly this illness had come upon him.  He recollected, however, that in the morning, while saying mass, he had been quite calm and restful.  It must have been later, perhaps during his long walk in the sun, or while he shivered under the trees of the Paradou, or while stifling in Desiree’s poultry-yard.  And then he lived through the day again.