presence of the Divinity? He regarded the dogmas of that Church as
puerile errors, and yet he persisted in teaching them as if they were
eternal truths. Base work it was, that alarmed his conscience. He vainly
sought the feverish glow of charity and martyrdom which had led him to
offer himself as a sacrifice, willing to suffer all the torture of doubt
and to find his own life lost and ravaged, provided that he might yet
afford the relief of hope to the lowly. Truth and nature, no doubt, had
already regained too much ascendancy over him for those feelings to
return. The thought of such a lying apostolate now wounded him; he no
longer had the hypocritical courage to call the Divinity down upon the
believers kneeling before him, when he was convinced that the Divinity
would not descend. Thus all the past was swept away; there remained
nothing of the sublime pastoral part he would once have liked to play,
that supreme gift of himself which lay in stubborn adherence to the rules
of the Church, and such devotion to faith as to endure in silence the
torture of having lost it.

What must Marie think of his prolonged falsehood, he wondered, and
thereupon he seemed to hear her words again: "Why not take your cassock
off?" His conscience bled as if those words were a stab. What contempt
must she not feel for him, she who was so upright, so high-minded? Every
scattered blame, every covert criticism directed against his conduct,
seemed to find embodiment in her. It now sufficed that she should condemn
him, and he at once felt guilty. At the same time she had never voiced
her disapproval to him, in all probability because she did not think she
had any right to intervene in a struggle of conscience. The superb
calmness and healthiness which she displayed still astonished him. He
himself was ever haunted and tortured by thoughts of the unknown, of what
the morrow of death might have in store for one; but although he had
studied and watched her for days together, he had never seen her give a