by all these girls on their
knees before him or hanging on his lips; before all these modest or burning
looks fixed upon his gaze, a strange sensation rose to his brain; the
perspiration stood upon his forehead, he blushed and grew pale by turns; a
shiver ran through his frame, and trying to subdue the ardour of his gaze,
he turned towards the crowd of young girls, and said to them in a trembling
voice:

--_Dominus vobiscum_.

--_Et cum spiritu tuo_, answered the choir of maidens. Oh, how willingly
instead of the name of God would he have cast to them his heart.

II.

THE CONFESSIONAL.

"In the course of the holy missions to
which I have consecrated a great portion
of my life, I have often come across
upright souls, disposed to make great
progress in perfection, if they had found
a skilful director."

THE REV. FATHER J.B. SCAROMELLI
(_The Spiritual Guide_).

However, almost in spite of myself, I was interested in this young priest,
and although disposed to believe that he was a knave like the rest, I was
sensible of something in him so upright and so loyal that I was, from the
very first, prejudiced in his favour.

And besides, these flashes of fiery passion which at times betrayed him,
could they serve as an accusation against him? Could one take offence at
his not having completely stifled at thirty years the fierce passions of
youth and his violent desires? Was it not a proof on the contrary of his
victorious struggles and of his energy?

And even though he should succumb before the imperious needs of potent
nature, which would be the more culpable, he or the women who surrounded
him, enveloped him with their gaze, encompassed him with their seductions;
he or the husbands and fathers who seemed tacitly to say to him: "You are
young, ardent, fall of passion and vigour, there is my daughter, there is
my wife, I hand them to you, receive their confessions, dive into their
looks, read in their soul, listen month to month to their most secret
confidences, but beware of touching their lips."

Fools! And when the priest succumbs and their shame is noised abroad, they
make a great uproar and complain to all the echoes, instead of bowing their
head and humbly saying: _mea culpa_.

What? silly fool, you cast the modesty of your young wife and the virginity
of your daughter as food for that envious celibate, you leave them alone in
the mysterious tete-a-tete of the confessional, with no