“’Have you ever felt like that?  You speak of it calmly, but have you ever experienced it?’

“I hesitated.  Then I said: 

“‘Yes.’

“‘You, who have been a monk for so many years!’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Since you have been here?’

“‘Yes, since then.’

“’And you would tell me that the feeling passed, that hope came again, and the dream as you call it?’

“’I would say that what has lived in a heart can die, as we who live in this world shall die.’

“’Ah, that—­the sooner the better!  But you are wrong.  Sometimes a thing lives in the heart that cannot die so long as the heart beats.  Such is my passion, my torture.  Don’t you, a monk—­don’t dare to say to me that this love of mine could die.’

“‘Don’t you wish it to die?’ I asked.  ‘You say it tortures you.’

“‘Yes.  But no—­no—­I don’t wish it to die.  I could never wish that.’

“I looked at him, I believe, with a deep astonishment.

“‘Ah, you don’t understand!’ he said.  ’You don’t understand.  At all costs one must keep it—­one’s love.  With it I am—­as you see.  But without it—­man, without it, I should be nothing—­no more than that.’

“He picked up a rotten leaf, held it to me, threw it down on the ground.  I hardly looked at it.  He had said to me:  ‘Man!’ That word, thus said by him, seemed to me to mark the enormous change in me, to indicate that it was visible to the eyes of another, the heart of another.  I had passed from the monk—­the sexless being—­to the man.  He set me beside himself, spoke of me as if I were as himself.  An intense excitement surged up in me.  I think—­I don’t know what I should have said—­done—­but at that moment a boy, who acted as a servant at the monastery, came running towards us with a letter in his hand.

“‘It is for Monsieur!’ he said.  ‘It was left at the gate.’

“‘A letter for me!’ the stranger said.

“He held out his hand and took it indifferently.  The boy gave it, and turning, went away through the wood.  Then the stranger glanced at the envelope.  Domini, I wish I could make you see what I saw then, the change that came.  I can’t.  There are things the eyes must see.  The tongue can’t tell them.  The ghastly whiteness went out of his face.  A hot flood of scarlet rushed over it up to the roots of his hair.  His hands and his whole body began to tremble violently.  His eyes, which were fixed on the envelope, shone with an expression—­it was like all the excitement in the world condensed into two sparks.  He dropped his stick and sat down on the trunk of a tree, fell down almost.

“‘Father!’ he muttered, ’it’s not been through the post—­it’s not been through the post!’

“I did not understand.

“‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

“‘What——­’

“The flush left his face.  He turned deadly white again.  He held out the letter.