to the warm sun its treasures and its perfumes?

XIII.

THE RESOLUTION.

"My life was blighted, my universe
was changed; I had entangled myself
without knowing it in an inextricable
drama. I must get out of it at any
cost, and I had no way of unravelling
it. I resolved by all means to find one."

J. JANIN (_L'Ans morte_).

He sat by his desolate hearth and began to think with terror of the eternal
solitude of that hearth. Alone! always alone! Already he had said to
himself very often that he had chosen the wrong road, that this arid and
desolate path was not the one needful to his ardent soul, that the hopes
with which he had formerly been deluded, were falsehoods in reality, and
that the God whom they had made him believe that he loved with such ardour,
left his soul empty and barren.

To love God! The love of God! High-sounding, hollow words which enable
hypocrites to take advantage of the common people; fantastic passion
kindled in the heart of fools for the amazement of the simple!

Ah! how willingly would he have replaced the worn-out vision of this
chimerical phantom with the likeness of some young girl, with sweet look
and smile, full of promise.

And the burning memory of the wanton player came and blended with the fresh
and radiant memory of the charming pupil of Saint-Denis.

"But why, priest, dost thou permit thy fevered guilty imagination to wander
thus? Pursue thy course, pursue it without stopping, without looking back;
henceforth it is too late to retrace thy path; anyhow be chaste, be chaste
under pain of shame and infamy.

"Thou must not be chaste in view of recompense like a slave, thou must be
chaste without expectance."[1]

He took up a book, his sovereign remedy in hours of temptation. It was the
life of St. Antony, written by his companion, St. Athanasius.

"The demons presented to his mind thoughts of impurity, but Antony repulsed
them by prayer. The devil excited his senses, but Antony blushed with
shame, as though the fault were his own, and strengthened his body by
faith, by prayer and by vigil. The devil, seeing himself vanquished thus,
took the shape of a young and lovely woman and imitated the most lascivious
actions in order to beguile him, but Antony raising his thoughts towards
heaven and considering the loftiness and excellence of the soul which is
given to us, extinguished these burning coals by which the devil hoped to
inflame his heart through t