extraordinary labourer; not a soldier of the regular army, hampered by
uniform and discipline, but a free champion of the Holy Spirit. The
monastic laws had never before appeared to him in such fierce antagonism
with his ideal of a modern saint. And now, what if the Divine Will
concerning Benedetto should reveal itself contrary to his desires?

Ah! was he not already almost on the verge of committing mortal sin?
Had he not been about to judge the ways of God, he presumptuous dust?
Prostrate upon the kneeling-stool, he sought to merge himself in
the Almighty, praying silently for forgiveness, for a revelation to
Benedetto of the Divine Will, and ready to worship it, whatever it might
be, from this time forth. As he rose, with a natural ebbing of the
mystic wave from his heart, his eyes still turned towards the altar, but
no longer fixed upon the tabernacle, he could not refrain from thinking
of Jeanne Dessalle and of what Benedetto had said. The very indifferent
picture above the altar represented the martyr Anatolia offering,
from Paradise, the symbolical palms to Audax, the young pagan who had
attempted to seduce her, but whom, instead, she had led to Christ.
Jeanne Dessalle had seduced Benedetto; of this Don Clemente had no
doubts, notwithstanding Benedetto's attempt to exonerate her and accuse
himself. What if she should now be converted through him? Was it perhaps
right that he should try? Was Benedetto's impulse really more Christian
than his own fears and the Abbot's scruples? As he crossed the church
with bowed head, Don Clemente's mind was struggling with these
questions. Anatolia and Audax! He remembered that a sceptical foreigner,
upon hearing the explanation of the picture from him, had said: "Yes,
but what if neither of them had been put to death? And what if Audax had
been a married man?"

These jesting words had seemed to him an unworthy profanation. He