subordinate to spiritual exercises[73] - mass every day and five
visits to the Saint-Sacrament, with one minute to half-hour prayer
stations; rosaries of sixty-three paters and aves, litanies, the
angelus, loud and whispered prayers, special self-examinations,
meditation on the knees, edifying readings in common, silence
until one o'clock in the afternoon, silence at meals and the
listening to an edifying discourse, frequent communions, weekly
confessions, general confession at New-year's, one day of retreat
at the end of every month after the vacations and before the
collation of each of the four orders, eight days of retirement
during which a suspension of all study, morning and evening
sermons, spiritual readings, meditations, orisons and other services
from hour to hour;[74] in short, the daily and systematic application
of a wise and steadily perfected method, the most serviceable for
fortifying faith, exalting the imagination, giving direction and
impulse to the will, analogous to that of a military school, Saint-Cyr
or Saumur, to such an extent that its corporeal and mental imprint
is indelible, and that by the way in which he thinks, talks, smiles,
bows and stands in your presence we at once recognize a former pupil
of Saint-Sulpice as we do a former pupil of Saumur and of Saint-Cyr.
Thus graduated, an ordained and consecrated priest, first a vicar and
then a curé desservant, the discipline which has bound and fashioned
him still keeps him erect and presenting arms. Besides his duties in
church and his ministrations in the homes of his parishioners, besides
masses, vespers, sermons, catechisings, confessions, communions,
baptisms, marriages, extreme unctions, funerals, visiting the sick and
suffering, he has his personal and private exercises: at first, his
breviary, the reading of which demands each day an hour and a half, no
practical duty being so necessary. Lamennais obtained a dispensation
from it, and hence his lapses and fall.[75] Let no one object that