him to live a good life and, when he had fallen into grievous
sin, it was they who had led him back to grace. Their presence had made
him diffident of himself when he was a muff in Clongowes and it had made
him diffident of himself also while he had held his equivocal position
in Belvedere. A constant sense of this had remained with him up to the
last year of his school life. He had never once disobeyed or allowed
turbulent companions to seduce him from his habit of quiet obedience;
and, even when he doubted some statement of a master, he had never
presumed to doubt openly. Lately some of their judgements had sounded a
little childish in his ears and had made him feel a regret and pity as
though he were slowly passing out of an accustomed world and were
hearing its language for the last time. One day when some boys had
gathered round a priest under the shed near the chapel, he had heard
the priest say:

--I believe that Lord Macaulay was a man who probably never committed
a mortal sin in his life, that is to say, a deliberate mortal sin.

Some of the boys had then asked the priest if Victor Hugo were not the
greatest French writer. The priest had answered that Victor Hugo had
never written half so well when he had turned against the church as he
had written when he was a catholic.

--But there are many eminent French critics, said the priest, who
consider that even Victor Hugo, great as he certainly was, had not so
pure a French style as Louis Veuillot.

The tiny flame which the priest's allusion had kindled upon Stephen's
cheek had sunk down again and his eyes were still fixed calmly on the
colourless sky. But an unresting doubt flew hither and thither before
his mind. Masked memories passed quickly before him: he recognized
scenes and persons yet he was conscious that he had failed to perceive
some vital circumstance in them. He saw himself walking about the
grounds watching the sports in Clongowes and eating slim jim out of his
cricket cap. Some jesuits were walking round the cycle-track in the
company of ladies. The echoes of certain expressions used in Clongowes
sounded in remote caves of his mind.

His ears were listening to these distant echoes amid the silence of the
parlour when he became aware that the priest was addressing him in a
different voice.

--I sent for you today, Stephen, because I wished to speak to you on a
very important subject.

--Yes, sir.

--Have you ever felt that you had a vocatio