d as he thus
replied his voice trembled with disgust, and his open hands made a
gesture of surrender as though he were yielding up his soul. The words he
had chosen were precisely those of the required formula: _Auctor
laudabiliter se subjecit et opus reprobavit_. "The author has laudably
made his submission and reprobated his work." No error could have been
confessed, no hope could have accomplished self-destruction with loftier
despair, more sovereign grandeur. But what frightful irony: that book
which he had sworn never to withdraw, and for whose triumph he had fought
so passionately, and which he himself now denied and suppressed, not
because he deemed it guilty, but because he had just realised that it was
as futile, as chimerical as a lover's desire, a poet's dream. Ah! yes,
since he had been mistaken, since he had merely dreamed, since he had
found there neither the Deity nor the priest that he had desired for the
happiness of mankind, why should he obstinately cling to the illusion of
an awakening which was impossible! 'Twere better to fling his book on the
ground like a dead leaf, better to deny it, better to cut it away like a
dead limb that could serve no purpose whatever!

Somewhat surprised by such a prompt victory Leo XIII raised a slight
exclamation of content. "That is well said, my son, that is well said!
You have spoken the only words that can become a priest."

And in his evident satisfaction, he who left nothing to chance, who
carefully prepared each of his audiences, deciding beforehand what words
he would say, what gestures even he would make, unbent somewhat and
displayed real _bonhomie_. Unable to understand, mistaking the real
motives of this rebellious priest's submission, he tasted positive
delight in having so easily reduced him to silence, the more so as report
had stated the young man to be a terrible revolutionary. And thus his
Holiness felt quite proud of such a conversion. "Moreover, my son," he
said, "I did not expect less of one of your distinguished mind. There can
be no loftier enjoyment than that of owning one's error, doing penance,
and submitting."

He had again taken the glass off the little table beside him and was
stirring the last spoonful of syrup before drinking it. And Pierre was
amazed at again finding him as he had found him at the outset, shrunken,
bereft of sovereign majesty, and simply suggestive of some aged
_bourgeois_ drinking his glass of sugared water before get