The missionary resumed:  “It is my duty, father, to continue this sketch of my past life, until the moment of my departure for America.  You will understand, presently, why I have imposed on myself this obligation.”

Father d’Aigrigny nodded for him to proceed.

“Once informed of the pretended wishes of my adopted mother, I resigned myself to them, though at some cost of feeling.  I left the gloomy abode, in which I had passed my childhood and part of my youth, to enter one of the seminaries of the Company.  My resolution was not caused by an irresistible religious vocation, but by a wish to discharge the sacred debt I owed my adopted mother.  Yet the true spirit of the religion of Christ is so vivifying, that I felt myself animated and warmed by the idea of carrying out the adorable precepts of our Blessed Saviour.  To my imagination, a seminary, instead of resembling the college where I had lived in painful restraint, appeared like a holy place, where all that was pure and warm in the fraternity of the Gospel would be applied to common life—­where, for example, the lessons most frequently taught would be the ardent love of humanity, and the ineffable sweets of commiseration and tolerance—­where the everlasting words of Christ would be interpreted in their broadest sense—­and where, in fine, by the habitual exercise and expansion of the most generous sentiments, men were prepared for the magnificent apostolic mission of making the rich and happy sympathize with the sufferings of their brethren, by unveiling the frightful miseries of humanity—­a sublime and sacred morality, which none are able to withstand, when it is preached with eyes full of tears, and hearts overflowing with tenderness and charity!”

As he delivered these last words with profound emotion, Gabriel’s eyes became moist, and his countenance shone with angelic beauty.

“Such is, indeed, my dear son, the spirit of Christianity; but one must also study and explain the letter,” answered Father d’Aigrigny, coldly.  “It is to this study that the seminaries of our Company are specially destined.  Now the interpretation of the letter is a work of analysis, discipline, and submission—­and not one of heart and sentiment.”

“I perceive that only too well, father.  On entering this new house, I found, alas! all my hopes defeated.  Dilating for a moment, my heart soon sunk within me.  Instead of this centre of life, affection, youth, of which I had dreamed.  I found, in the silent and ice-cold seminary, the same suppression of every generous emotion, the same inexorable discipline, the same system of mutual prying, the same suspicion, the same invincible obstacles to all ties of friendship.  The ardor which had warmed my soul for an instant soon died out; little by little, I fell back into the habits of a stagnant, passive, mechanical life, governed by a pitiless power with mechanical precision, just like the inanimate works of a watch.”