towards the acolyte whom it attracted upwards. He had once, just before
Enguerrand's death, spoken to Isaura with a touching candour as to his
own predilection for a monastic life. "The worldly avocations that open
useful and honourable careers for others have no charm for me. I care
not for riches nor power, nor honours nor fame. The austerities of the
conventual life have no terror for me; on the contrary, they have a
charm, for with them are abstraction from earth and meditation on heaven.
In earlier years I might, like other men, have cherished dreams of human
love, and felicity in married life, but for the sort of veneration with
which I regarded one to whom I owe--humanly speaking--whatever of good
there may be in me. Just when first taking my place among the society of
young men who banish from their life all thought of another, I came under
the influence of a woman who taught me to see that holiness was beauty.
She gradually associated me with her acts of benevolence, and from her I
learned to love God too well not to be indulgent to his creatures. I
know not whether the attachment I felt to her could have been inspired in
one who had not from childhood conceived a romance, not perhaps justified
by history, for the ideal images of chivalry. My feeling for her at
first was that of the pure and poetic homage which a young knight was
permitted, _sans reproche_, to render to some fair queen or chatelaine,
whose colours he wore in the lists, whose spotless repute he would have
perilled his life to defend. But soon even that sentiment, pure as it
was, became chastened from all breath of earthly love, in proportion as
the admiration refined itself into reverence. She has often urged me to
marry, but I have no bride on this earth. I do but want to see
Enguerrand happily married, and then I quit the world for the cloister."

But after Enguerrand's death, Raoul resigned all idea of the convent.
That evening, as he attended to their homes Isaura and the other ladies
at to the ambulance, he said, in answer to inquiries about his mother,