e pretended wishes of my adopted mother, I resigned
myself to them, though at some cost of feeling. I left the gloomy abode,
in which I had passed my childhood and part of my youth, to enter one
of the seminaries of the Company. My resolution was not caused by an
irresistible religious vocation, but by a wish to discharge the sacred
debt I owed my adopted mother. Yet the true spirit of the religion of
Christ is so vivifying, that I felt myself animated and warmed by the
idea of carrying out the adorable precepts of our Blessed Saviour. To my
imagination, a seminary, instead of resembling the college where I had
lived in painful restraint, appeared like a holy place, where all that
was pure and warm in the fraternity of the Gospel would be applied to
common life--where, for example, the lessons most frequently taught
would be the ardent love of humanity, and the ineffable sweets of
commiseration and tolerance--where the everlasting words of Christ
would be interpreted in their broadest sense--and where, in fine, by
the habitual exercise and expansion of the most generous sentiments, men
were prepared for the magnificent apostolic mission of making the rich
and happy sympathize with the sufferings of their brethren, by unveiling
the frightful miseries of humanity--a sublime and sacred morality, which
none are able to withstand, when it is preached with eyes full of tears,
and hearts overflowing with tenderness and charity!"

As he delivered these last words with profound emotion, Gabriel's eyes
became moist, and his countenance shone with angelic beauty.

"Such is, indeed, my dear son, the spirit of Christianity; but one must
also study and explain the letter," answered Father d'Aigrigny, coldly.
"It is to this study that the seminaries of our Company are specially
destined. Now the interpretation of the letter is a work of analysis,
discipline, and submission--and not one of heart and sentiment."

"I perceive that only too well, father. On entering this new house, I
found, alas! all my hopes defeated. Dilating for a moment, my heart soon
sunk within me. Instead of this centre of life, affection, youth, of
which I had dreamed. I found, in the silent and ice-cold seminary,
the same suppression of every generous emotion, the same inexorable
discipline, the same system of mutual prying, the same suspicion, the
same invincible obstacles to all ties of friendship. The ardor which had
warmed my soul for an instant soon died ou