manner.  I have never met with any one so entirely free from personal vanity.  He was the first to laugh at himself, at his half intentional blunders, and at the laughable situations into which his artlessness would often land him.  Like all the older directors, he had to say the orison in his turn.  He never gave it five minutes previous consideration, and he sometimes got into such a comical state of confusion with his improvised address, that we had to bite our tongues to keep from laughing.  He saw how amused we were, and it struck him as being perfectly natural.  It was he who, during the course of Holy Writ, had to read M. Garnier’s manuscript.  He used to flounder about purposely, in order to make us laugh, in the parts which had fallen out of date.  The most singular thing was that he was not very mystic.  I asked one of my fellow students what he thought was M. Carbon’s motive-idea in life, and his reply was, “the abstract of duty.”  M. Carbon took a fancy to me from the first, and he saw that the fundamental feature in my disposition was cheerfulness, and a ready acquiescence in my lot.  “I see that we shall get on very well together,” he said to me with a pleasant smile; and as a matter of fact M. Carbon is one of those for whom I have felt the deepest affection.  Seeing that I was studious, full of application, and conscientious in my work, he said to me after a very short time—­“You should be thinking of your society, that is your proper place.”  He treated me almost as a colleague, so complete was his confidence in me.

The other directors, who had to teach the various branches of theology, were without exception the worthy continuators of a respectable tradition.  But as regards doctrine itself, the breach was made.  Ultramontanism and the love of the irrational had forced their way into the citadel of moderate theology.  The old school knew how to rave soberly, and followed the rules of common sense even in the absurd.  This school only admitted the irrational and the miraculous up to the limit strictly required by Holy Writ and the authority of the Church.  The new school revels in the miraculous, and seems to take its pleasure in narrowing the ground upon which apologetics can be defended.  Upon the other hand, it would be unfair not to say that the new school is in some respects more open and consistent, and that it has derived, especially through its relations with Germany, elements for discussion which have no place in the ancient treatises De Loci’s Theologicis.  St. Sulpice has had but one representative in this path so thickly sown with unexpected incidents and—­it may perhaps be added—­with dangers; but he is unquestionably the most remarkable member of the French clergy in the present day.  I am speaking of M. Le Hir, whom I knew very intimately, as will presently be seen.  In order to understand what follows, the reader must be very deeply versed in the workings of the human mind, and above all in matters of faith.