shape themselves and become fixed like crystals, intact and rigid, and
all of a piece; they are better protected than in the upper layers,
less exposed to mundane infiltrations; they run less risk of being
disturbed or thwarted by curiosity, reason and skepticism, by modern
ideas; the outside world and family surroundings do not, as elsewhere,
interfere with their silent internal workings.[66] When the choir-
boy comes home after the service, when the seminarian returns to his
parents in his vacations, he does not here en-counter so many
disintegrating influences, various kinds of information, free and easy
talk, comparisons between careers, concern about advancement, habits
of comfort, maternal solicitude, the shrugs of the shoulder and the
half-smile of the strong-minded neighbor. Stone upon stone and each
stone in its place, his faith builds up and becomes complete without
any incoherency in its structure, with no incongruity in the
materials, without any hidden imbalance. He has been taken in hand
before his twelfth year, when very young; his curé, who has been
instructed from above to secure suitable subjects, has singled him out
in the catechism class and again at the ceremony of confirmation;[67]
he is found to have a pious tendency and a taste for sacred
ceremonies, a suitable demeanor, a mild disposition, complacency, and
is inclined to study; he is a docile and well-behaved child; whether
an acolyte at the altar or in the sacristy, he tries to fold the
chasuble properly; all his genuflexions are correct, they do not worry
him, he has no trouble in standing still, he is not excited and
diverted, like the others, by the eruptions of animal spirits and
rustic coarseness. If his rude brain is open to cultivation, if
grammar and Latin can take root in it, the curé or the vicar at once
take charge of him; he studies under them, gratis or
nearly so, until he has completed the sixth or the seventh grade, and
then he enters the lower seminary.[68]