But he altered his mind. When the devil has succeeded in bringing a soul to
sin, there is no artifice he does not use to blind him beforehand, and to
turn away his thought from everything capable of making him see the unhappy
state in which he is. That is what the Church teaches.

Soon he viewed this passion under a new aspect, and he asked himself why he
had not the right to love. Had not all the saints loved? Had not St. Jerome
loved St. Paula? Had not Francis de Sales loved Madame de Chantal? Had not
Fénélon loved Madame Guyon? St. Theresa, her spiritual director, and
Venillot, his cook?

Were there not two kinds of love? The ethereal, ideal, chaste, seraphic
love, the love of the creature grateful for the perfect work of the
creator; platonic love, free from all impurity, allowed to the virtuous
confessor for his virtuous penitent, the love of the wise man in fact;
or--the other. Then with that art of the rhetorician which sacred
scholasticism teaches to every Levite, he said to himself, "Yes, I can
love, for it is the spotless love of the angels."

But his conscience protested and cried to him: "It is the other!"




XXXI.


THE VIRGIN.