mother through a tragedy the fearful details of which were even now unknown to him,* he had relinquished all his share of their property to an elder brother.  His only remaining link with the world was his sister; he had undertaken the care of her, stirred by a kind of religious affection for her feeble intelligence.  The dear innocent was so childish, such a very little girl, that she recalled to him the poor in spirit to whom the Gospel promises the kingdom of heaven.  Of late, however, she had somewhat disturbed him; she was growing too lusty, too full of health and life.  But his discomfort was yet of the slightest.  His days were spent in that inner life he had created for himself, for which he had relinquished all else.  He closed the portals of his senses, and sought to free himself from all bodily needs, so that he might be but a soul enrapt in contemplation.  To him nature offered only snares and abominations; he gloried in maltreating her, in despising her, in releasing himself from his human slime.  And as the just man must be a fool according to the world, he considered himself an exile on this earth; his thoughts were solely fixed upon the favours of Heaven, incapable as he was of understanding how an eternity of bliss could be weighed against a few hours of perishable enjoyment.  His reason duped him and his senses lied; and if he advanced in virtue it was particularly by humility and obedience.  His wish was to be the last of all, one subject to all, in order that the divine dew might fall upon his heart as upon arid sand; he considered himself overwhelmed with reproach and with confusion, unworthy of ever being saved from sin.  He no longer belonged to himself—­blind, deaf, dead to the world as he was.  He was God’s thing.  And from the depth of the abjectness to which he sought to plunge, Hosannahs suddenly bore him aloft, above the happy and the mighty into the splendour of never-ending bliss.

  * This forms the subject of M. Zola’s novel, The Conquest of
    Plassans.  ED.

Thus, at Les Artaud, Abbe Mouret had once more experienced, each time he read the ‘Imitation,’ the raptures of the cloistered life which he had longed for at one time so ardently.  As yet he had not had to fight any battle.  From the moment that he knelt down, he became perfect, absolutely oblivious of the flesh, unresisting, undisturbed, as if overpowered by the Divine grace.  Such ecstasy at God’s approach is well known to some young priests:  it is a blissful moment when all is hushed, and the only desire is but a boundless craving for purity.  From no human creature had he sought his consolations.  He who believes a certain thing to be all in all cannot be troubled:  and he did believe that God was all in all, and that humility, obedience, and chastity were everything.  He could remember having heard temptation spoken of as an abominable torture that tries the holiest.  But he would only smile:  God had never left him.  He bore his faith about