losing the thread of my ideas in some tissue of absurdity.  With an inveterate habit of being over polite, as priests generally are, I am too anxious to detect what the person I am talking with would like said to him.  My attention, when I am conversing with any one, is engrossed in trying to guess at his ideas, and, from excess of deference, to anticipate him in the expression of them.  This is based upon the supposition that very few men are so far unconcerned as to their own ideas as not to be annoyed when one differs from them.  I only express myself freely with people whose opinions I know to sit lightly upon them, and who look down upon everything with good-natured contempt.  My correspondence will be a disgrace to me if it should be published after my death.  It is a perfect torture for me to write a letter.  I can understand a person airing his talents before ten as before ten thousand persons, but before one!  Before beginning to write, I hesitate and reflect, and make out a rough copy of what I shall say; very often I go to sleep over it.  A person need only look at these letters with their heavy wording and abrupt sentences to see that they were composed in a state of torpor which borders on sleep.  Reading over what I have written, I see that it is poor stuff, and that I have said many things which I cannot vouch for.  In despair, I fasten down the envelope, with the feeling that I have posted a letter which is beneath criticism.

In short, all my defects are those of the young ecclesiastical student of Treguier.  I was born to be a priest, as others are born to be soldiers and lawyers.  The very fact of my being successful in my studies was a proof of it.  What was the good of learning Latin so thoroughly if it was not for the Church?  A peasant, noticing all my dictionaries upon one occasion, observed:  “These, I suppose, are the books which people study when they are preparing for the priesthood.”  As a matter of fact, all those who studied at school at all were in training for the ecclesiastical profession.  The priestly order stood on a par with the nobility:  “When you meet a noble,” I have heard it observed, “you salute him, because he represents the king; when you meet a priest, you salute him because he represents God.”  To make a priest was regarded as the greatest of good works; and the elderly spinsters who had a little money thought that they could not find a better use for it than in paying the college fees of a poor but hard-working young peasant.  When he came to be a priest, he became their own child, their glory, and their honour.  They followed him in his career, and watched over his conduct with jealous care.  As a natural consequence of my assiduity in study I was destined for the priesthood.  Moreover, I was of sedentary habits and too weak of muscle to distinguish myself in athletic sports.  I had an uncle of a Voltairian turn of mind, who did not at all approve of this.  He was a watchmaker, and had reckoned upon me to take on his business.