llness
left me sickly and ailing, and unfitted me utterly for such a life.
Similarly it unfitted me for the labour of the fields, so that I
threatened to become a useless burden upon my parents, who were
peasant-folk. To avoid this they determined to make a monk of me; they
offered me to God because they found me unfitted for the service of man;
and, poor, simple, self-deluded folk, they accounted that in doing so
they did a good and pious thing.

"I showed aptitude in learning; I became interested in the things I
studied; I was absorbed by them in fact, and never gave a thought to the
future; I submitted without question to the wishes of my parents, and
before I awakened to a sense of what was done and what I was, myself, I
was in orders."

He sank his voice impressively as he concluded--"For ten years
thereafter, Agostino, I wore a hair-shirt day and night, and for girdle
a knotted length of whip-cord in which were embedded thorns that stung
and chafed me and tore my body. For ten years, then, I never knew bodily
ease or proper rest at night. Only thus could I bring into subjection my
rebellious flesh, and save myself from the way of ordinary men which to
me must have been a path of sacrilege and sin. I was devout. Had I not
been devout and strong in my devotion I could never have endured what
I was forced to endure as the alternative to damnation, because without
consideration for my nature I had been ordained a priest.

"Consider this, Agostino; consider it well. I would not have you go that
way, nor feel the need to drive yourself from temptation by such a spur.
Because I know--I say it in all humility, Agostino, I hope, and thanking
God for the exceptional grace He vouchsafed me to support me--that for
one priest without vocation who can quench temptation by such agonizing
means, a hundred perish, which is bad; and by the scandal of their
example they drive many from the Church and set a weapon in the hands of
her enemies, which is a still heavier reckoning to meet hereafter."

A spell of silence followed. I was strangely moved by his tale,
strangely impressed by the warning that I perceived in it. And yet my
confidence, I think, was all unshaken.

And when presently he rose, took up his taper, and stood by my bedside
to ask me once again did I believe myself to be called, I showed my
confidence in my answer.

"It is my hope and prayer that I am called, indeed," I said. "The life
that will best prepare me f