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 him thus like a breast-plate
protecting him from the slightest breath of evil. He could recall how he
had hidden himself and wept for very love; he knew not whom he loved,
but he wept for love, for love of some one afar off. The recollection
never failed to move him. Later on he had decided on becoming a priest
in order to satisfy that craving for a superhuman affection which was
his sole torment. He could not see where greater love could be. In that
state of life he satisfied his being, his inherited predisposition, his