[Footnote 1:  Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales.  Vol.  VI.]

[Footnote 2:  The inconveniences of compulsory chastity are more or less grave according to different cases:  with youthful subjects, vigorous, and fed on succulent foods, mental derangement under the most horrible forms, such as Satyriasis, Priapism, Erotomania, Nymphomania and even death may quickly result from it.  Instances are numerous. (Sciences medicales).]

XII.

THE TEMPTATION.

  “Alas! to return alone to our deserted home
  With no open window to herald our approach,
  If, when from the horizon we behold our roof,
  We cannot say, ’My return gladdens my home’.”

  LAMARTINE (Jocelin).

It was at Sunday’s Mass, in the sanctuary itself, that he waited for his prey.  The priest had scarcely reached the steps of the altar, his hands laden with the holy vessels, when, lifting his eyes to the gallery, he encountered the look he dreaded.

Suzanne Durand was there, fixing on him her eyes, filled with magnetic force.

He returned once again full of trouble.

His servant, surprised at his agitation, overwhelmed him with inquisitive questions; he escaped from her and hastened towards the woods.  He cast himself on the moss at the foot of an old oak and began to reflect.  The dark eyes followed him everywhere.

“Whither am I going?” he said to himself.  “Why does the sight of this young girl agitate my heart in this way?” And he examined his heart and found it saturated with bitterness, disgust, weariness and regret, and in the midst of all that, something unknown was springing up.  It was like a germ of hope which all at once had risen out of nothingness, a fleeting light which flickered in the dense gloom of his life.

He heard the sound of a voice at some distance, a fresh, gay, melodious voice, to which a deeper note was answering.  Spring, youth and love were mingling their accents together.  Between the foliage he saw them slowly passing.  They did not see him.  Absorbed in the contemplation of themselves, arm in arm, with joined hands, their faces together, they passed along with bright looks, and open hearts, rejoicing in the seventh heaven.

Now and again they stopped, and he all in play, took hold of her thick knot of hair, drew her head backwards and gave her a long kiss on the lips.  He did not tire of it, but she pushed him back with all her strength, putting her hand on his mouth and saying to him, “That’s enough, naughty boy, that’s enough.”  The Cure knew them well.  She was the best and prettiest girl in his congregation, and he, the happy rogue, sang in the choir.  And he began to envy the happiness of this rustic; he would have wished to be for a moment this rude ignorant peasant, and who knows, for a moment? why not always?  Would he not be happier going each morning to till the fruitful soil, to sow the furrow, and then to cut the sheaves of the golden harvest, than to vegetate as he was, casting his sterile grain upon arid souls.