Besides that dryness of the heart which made him feel as soon as he entered a church or knelt down in his room, that a cold grip froze his prayers and chilled his soul, he detected the covert attacks, the mute assaults of ridiculous pride.

In vain did he keep watch; he was constantly taken by surprise without having time even to look round him.

It began under the most temperate guise, the most benign reflections.

Supposing, for instance, that he had done his neighbour a service at some inconvenience to himself, or that he had refrained from retaliating on anybody against whom he believed he had a grievance, or for whom he had no liking, a certain self-satisfaction stole, sneaked into his mind, a certain vain-glory, ending in the senseless conclusion that he was superior to many another man; and then, on this feeling of petty vanity, pride was engrafted—­the pride of a virtue he had not even struggled to acquire, the arrogance of chastity, so insidious that most of those who indulge it do not even suspect themselves.

And he was never aware of the end of these assaults till too late, when they had become definite, and he had forgotten himself and succumbed; and he was in despair at finding that he constantly fell into the same snare, telling himself that the little good he could do must be wiped out of the balance of his life by the outrageous extravagance of this vice.

He was frenzied, he reasoned with the old mad arguments, and cried out at his wits’ end,—­

“La Trappe crushed me!  It cured me of sensuality, but only to load me with disorders of which I knew nothing before I submitted to that treatment!  It is humble itself, but it puffed up my vanity and increased my pride tenfold—­then it set me free, but so weak, so wearied, that I have never since been able to conquer that inanition, never have been fit to enjoy the Mystical Nourishment which I nevertheless must have if I am not to die to God!”

And for the hundredth time he asked himself,—­

“Am I happier than I was before I was converted?”

And to be truthful to himself he was bound to answer “Yes.”  He lived on the whole a Christian life, prayed but badly, but at any rate prayed without ceasing; only—­only—­Alas!  How worm-eaten, how arid were the poor recesses of his soul!  He wondered, with anguish, whether they would not end like the Manor in Edgar Poe’s tale, by crumbling suddenly, one fatal day, into the dark waters of the pool of sin which was undermining the walls.

Having reached this stage of his round of meditations, he was compelled to throw himself on the Abbe Gevresin, who required him, in spite of his coldness, to take the Communion.  Since his return from Notre Dame de l’Atre his friendship with the Abbe had become much closer, altogether intimate.

He knew now the inner man of this priest, who, in the midst of modern surroundings, led a purely mediaeval life.  Formerly, when he rang at his bell, he had paid no heed to the housekeeper, an old woman, who curtsied to him without a word when she opened the door.