Thereupon, by a supreme effort, he drove the female element from his worship, and sought refuge in Jesus, though even His gentle mildness sometimes proved a source of disquietude to him.  What he needed was a jealous God, an implacable God, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, girded with thunder and manifesting Himself only to chastise the terrified world.  He had done with the saints and the angels and the Divine Mother; he bowed down before God Himself alone, the omnipotent Master, who demanded from him his every breath.  And he felt the hand of this God laid heavily upon him, holding him helpless at His mercy through space and time, like a guilty atom.  Ah! to be nothing, to be damned, to dream of hell, to wrestle vainly against hideous temptations, all that was surely good.

From Jesus he took but the cross.  He was seized with that passion for the cross which has made so many lips press themselves again and again to the crucifix till they were worn away with kissing.  He took up the cross and followed Jesus.  He sought to make it heavier, the mightiest of burdens; it was great joy to him to fall beneath its weight, to drag it on his knees, his back half broken.  In it he beheld the only source of strength for the soul, of joy for the mind, of the consummation of virtue and the perfection of holiness.  In it lay all that was good; all ended in death upon it.  To suffer and to die, those words ever sounded in his ears, as the end and goal of mortal wisdom.  And, when he had fastened himself to the cross, he enjoyed the boundless consolation of God’s love.  It was no longer, now, upon Mary that he lavished filial tenderness or lover’s passion.  He loved for love’s mere sake, with an absolute abstract love.  He loved God with a love that lifted him out of himself, out of all else, and wrapped him round with a dazzling radiance of glory.  He was like a torch that burns away with blazing light.  And death seemed to him to be only a great impulse of love.

But what had he omitted to do that he was thus so sorely tried?  With his hand he wiped away the perspiration that streamed down his brow, and reflected that, that very morning, he had made his usual self-examination without finding any great guilt within him.  Was he not leading a life of great austerity and mortification of the flesh?  Did he not love God solely and blindly?  Ah! how he would have blessed His Holy Name had He only restored him his peace, deeming him now sufficiently punished for his transgression!  But, perhaps, that sin of his could never be expiated.  And then, in spite of himself, his mind reverted to Albine and the Paradou, and all their memories.