He seduces his
cook, or dishonours his niece."

And yet those most courageous natures exist, for they have resisted to the
end. We blame them, we are wrong. Who would have been capable of such
efforts and sacrifices? Who would sustain during ten, fifteen, twenty
years, similar straggles between the imperious requirements of nature and
the miserable duties of convention? They, therefore, who see their hair
fall before their virtue are very rare.

The crowd of priests strike themselves against the obstacles of the road
from the first steps, they tear their catechumen's robe with the white
thorns of May, and when they have arrived at the end of their career, they
have stopped many a time under some mysterious thicket, unknown by the
vulgar, relishing the forbidden fruit.

Let us leave them in peace. It is not I who will disturb their sweet
tete-a-tete.

XLII.

MEMORY LOOKING BACK.

"Man can do nothing against Destiny.
We go, time flies, and that which must
arrive, arrives."

LEON CLADEL (_L'Homme de la Croix-aux-Baufs_).

Marcel was one of those energetic natures who believe that struggle is one
of the conditions of life. He had valiantly accepted the task which was
incumbent upon him.

But there are hours of discouragement and exhaustion, in which the boldest
and the strongest succumb, and he had reached one of those hours.

And then, it is so difficult to struggle without ceasing, especially when
we catch no glimpse of calmer days. Weariness quickly comes and we sink
down on the road.

Then a friendly hand should be stretched towards us, should lift us up and
say to us "Courage." But Marcel could not lean on any friendly hand.

He had no one to whom he could confide his struggles, his vexations, and
the apprehension of his coming weaknesses.

Although his life as priest had been spotless up to then, his brethren held
aloof from him, for there was a bad mark against him at the Bishop's
Palace. It had been attached at the commencement of his career. He was one
of those catechumens on whom from the very first the most brilliant hopes
are founded. Knowledge, intelligence, respectful obedience, appearance of
piety, sympathetic face, everything was present in him.

The Bishop, a frivolous old man, a great lover of little girls, who
combined the sinecure of his bishopric with that of almoner to a
second-hand empress, whose name will remain celebrated in the annals of
devout gallantry or of gal