upsets us, and even deprives us of sleep and appetite.
Is not this increase of sensibility and repugnance found in the
religious state only to form in us the image of our crucified
Lord? If Christ alone has suffered interiorly more than all the
Saints and Martyrs together, was it not because of this extreme
repugnance of His soul, which multiplied to infinity for Him the
bitterness of the affronts and the rigour of His torments?
Religious may expect for a certainty that, like their Divine
Master, there are reserved for them moments of complete
abandonment, those agonies intended for the souls of the elect, in
which Nature seems on the point of succumbing. No consolation from
their families, which they have quitted; nor from their
companions, who are busy in their various employments; nor from
their Superiors, who do not understand the excess of their grief,
and whose words by Divine permission produce no effect.

The solemn moment of agony with our Divine Saviour was that in
which, abandoned, betrayed, and denied by His Apostles, and
perceiving in His Father only an irritated face, He exclaimed, "My
God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Such will be for
religious the last touch which will complete in them the
resemblance of Jesus crucified, provided they will render
themselves worthy of it.

When will be the time of this complete abandonment? How long will
this agony be prolonged? This is a secret known only to God.

XXXIII

CONCLUSION

POVERTY, chastity, obedience, and charity--such are the virtues
suitable and characteristic of the religious. In this little
treatise we have endeavoured to trace the features of the last.

In every community we can distinguish two sorts of religious--
those who mount and those who descend--those whose face is towards
the path of perfection, and those who have turned their back to
it. Perhaps amongst these latter some have only one more step to
abandon it altogether. Now we mount or descend, proceed or retrace
our steps, in proportion as we practise these four virtues or
neglect them.

A religious Order is like a fire balloon, which requires four
conditions in order to rise into the clouds amidst the applause of
the spectators. First, the rarefaction of the air by fire. This
represents the vow of poverty, which empties the heart through the
hands, and substitutes the desire of heavenly goods for those of
earth. Second, release from the cords which bind it down. This
r