At first he tried to make excuses for himself.  He had fallen, one evening, senseless upon the tiled floor of his bedroom, stricken with brain fever.  For three weeks he had remained unconscious.  His blood surged furiously through his veins and raged within him like a torrent that had burst its banks.  His whole body, from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, was so scoured and renewed and wrought afresh by the mighty labouring of his ailment, that in his delirium he had sometimes thought he could hear the very hammer blows of workmen that nailed his bones together again.  Then, one morning, he had awakened, feeling like a new being.  He was born a second time, freed of all that his five-and-twenty years of life had successively implanted in him.  His childish piety, his education at the seminary, the faith of his early priesthood, had all vanished, had been carried off, and their place was bare and empty.  In truth, it could be hell alone that had thus prepared him for the reception of evil, disarming him of all his former weapons, and reducing his body to languor and softness, through which sin might readily enter.

He, perfectly unconscious of it all, unknowingly surrendered himself to the gradual approach of evil.  When he had reopened his eyes in the Paradou, he had felt himself an infant once more, with no memory of the past, no knowledge of his priesthood.  He experienced a gentle pleasure, a glad feeling of surprise at thus beginning life afresh, as though it were all new and strange to him and would be delightful to learn.  Oh! the sweet apprenticeship, the charming observations, the delicious discoveries!  That Paradou was a vast abode of felicity; and hell, in placing him there, had known full well that he would be defenceless.  Never, in his first youth, had he known such enjoyment in growing.  That first youth of his, when he now thought of it, seemed quite black and gloomy, graceless, wan and inactive, as if it had been spent far away from the sunlight.

But at the Paradou, how joyfully had he hailed the sun!  How admiringly had he gazed at the first tree, at the first flower, at the tiniest insect he had seen, at the most insignificant pebble he had picked up!  The very stones charmed him.  The horizon was a source of never-ending amazement.  One clear morning, the memory of which still filled his eyes, bringing back a perfume of jasmine, a lark’s clear song, he had been so affected by emotion that he felt all power desert his limbs.  He had long found pleasure in learning the sensations of life.  And, ah! the morning when Albine had been born beside him amidst the roses!  As he thought of it, an ecstatic smile broke out upon his face.  She rose up like a star that was necessary to the very sun’s existence.  She illumined everything, she made everything clear.  She made his life complete.