and at a bound my dream of perfection.  I shall at last proclaim myself your true priest.  I shall become what all my studies, my prayers, my five years of initiation have been unable to make me.  Yes, I reject life; I say that the death of mankind is better than abomination.  Everything is stained; everywhere is love tainted.  Earth is steeped in impurity, whose slightest drops yield growths of shame.  But that I may be perfect, O Queen of angels, hearken to my prayer, and grant it!  Make me one of those angels that have only two great wings behind their cheeks; I shall then no longer have a body, no longer have any limbs; I will fly to you if you call me.  I shall be but a mouth to sing your praises, a pair of spotless wings to cradle you in your journeys through the heavens.  O death! death!  Virgin, most venerable, grant me the death of all!  I will love you for the death of my body, the death of all that lives and multiplies.  I will consummate with you the sole marriage that my heart desires.  I will ascend, ever higher and higher, till I have reached the brasier in which you shine in splendour.  There one beholds a mighty planet, an immense white rose, whose every petal glows like a moon, a silver throne whence you beam with such a blaze of innocence that heaven itself is all illumined by the gleam of your veil alone.  All that is white, the early dawns, the snow on inaccessible peaks, the lilies barely opening, the water of hidden, unknown springs, the milky sap of the plants untouched by the sun, the smiles of maidens, the souls of children dead in their cradles —­all rains upon your white feet.  And I will rise to your mouth like a subtle flame; I will enter into you by your parted lips, and the bridal will be fulfilled, while the archangels are thrilled by our joyfulness.  Oh, to be maiden, to love in maidenhood, to preserve amid the sweetest kisses one’s maiden whiteness!  To possess all love, stretched on the wings of swans, in a sky of purity, in the arms of a mistress of light, whose caresses are but raptures of the soul!  Oh, there lies the perfection, the super-human dream, the yearning which shatters my very bones, the joy which bears me up to heaven!  O Mary, Vessel of Election, rid me of all that is human in me, so that you may fearlessly surrender to me the treasure of your maidenhood!’

And then Abbe Mouret, felled by fever, his teeth chattering, swooned away on the floor.

BOOK II

I

Through calico curtains, carefully drawn across the two large windows, a pale white light like that of breaking day filtered into the room.  It was a lofty and spacious room, fitted up with old Louis XV. furniture, the woodwork painted white, the upholstery showing a pattern of red flowers on a leafy ground.  On the piers above the doors on either side of the alcove were faded paintings still displaying the rosy flesh of flying Cupids, whose games it was now impossible