youthful dreams, his first virile desires. If temptation must come, he
awaited it with the calmness of the seminarist ignorant of the world. He
felt that his manhood had been killed in him: it gladdened him to feel
himself a creature set apart, unsexed, turned from the usual paths of
life, and, as became a lamb of the Lord, marked with the tonsure.



V

While the priest pondered the sun was heating the big church-door.
Gilded flies buzzed round a large flower that was blooming between two
of the church-door steps. Abbe Mouret, feeling slightly dazed, was at
last about to move away, when the big black dog sprang, barking
violently, towards the iron gate of the little graveyard on the left of
the church. At the same time a harsh voice called out: 'Ah! you young
rascal! So you stop away from school, and I find you in the graveyard!
Oh, don't say no: I have been watching you this quarter of an hour.'

As the priest stepped forward he saw Vincent, whom a Brother of the
Christian Schools was clutching tightly by the ear. The lad was
suspended, as it were, over a ravine skirting the graveyard, at the
bottom of which flowed the Mascle, a mountain torrent whose crystal
waters plunged into the Viorne, six miles away.

'Brother Archangias!' softly called the priest, as if to appease the
fearful man.

The Brother, however, did not release the boy's ear.