No, I cannot put into words just what had happened; indeed, I never really knew all.  There was no public scandal, only great sorrow.  But I died that morning.  The young and happy part of me died, and, only half-alive I walked about among the living, dragging about with me the corpse of what had been myself.  Crushed by this horrible burden which none saw but I, I was blind to the beauties of earth and deaf to the mercies of heaven, until a great Voice called me to come out of the sepulcher of myself; and I came—­alive again, and free, of a strong spirit, but with youth gone from it.  Out of the void of an irremediable disaster God had called me to His service, chastened and humbled.

“Who is weak and I am not weak? who is offended and I burn not?”

And yet, although I knew my decision was irrevocable, I did not find it easy to tell my mother.  Then: 

“Little mother of my heart,” I blurted, “my career is decided.  I have been called.  I am for the Church.”

We were in her pleasant morning room, a beautiful room, and the lace curtains were pushed aside to allow free ingress of air and sunlight.  Between the windows hung two objects my mother most greatly cherished—­one an enameled Petitot miniature, gold-framed, of a man in the flower of his youth.  His hair, beautiful as the hair of Absalom, falls about his haughty, high-bred face, and so magnificently is he clothed that when I was a child I used to associate him in my mind with those “captains and rulers, clothed most gorgeously, all of them desirable young men, ... girdled with a girdle upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to” ... whom Aholibah “doted upon when her eyes saw them portrayed upon the walls in vermilion.”

The other is an Audran engraving of that same man grown old and stripped of beauty and of glory, as the leaf that falls and the flower that fades.  The somber habit of an order has replaced scarlet and gold; and sackcloth, satin.  Between the two pictures hangs an old crucifix.  For that is Armand De Rance, glorious sinner, handsomest, wealthiest, most gifted man of his day—­and his a day of glorious men; and this is Armand De Rance, become the sad austere reformer of La Trappe.

My mother rose, walked over to the Abbe’s pictures, and looked long and with rather frightened eyes at him.  Perhaps there was something in the similarity to his of the fate which had come upon me who bore his name, which caused her to turn so pale.  I also am an Armand De Rance, of a cadet branch of that great house, which emigrated to the New World when we French were founding colonies on the banks of the Mississippi.

Her hand went to her heart.  Turning, she regarded me pitifully.

“Oh, no, not that!” I reassured her.  “I am at once too strong and not strong enough for solitude and silence.  Surely there is room and work for one who would serve God through serving his fellow men, in the open, is there not?”