nce my flesh had been moved as a woman's
form passed by. That force of sex and blood which, in the madness of
youth, I had imagined that I had stifled forever had, more than once,
convulsively raised the chain of iron vows which bind me, a miserable
wretch, to the cold stones of the altar. But fasting, prayer, study,
the mortifications of the cloister, rendered my soul mistress of my body
once more, and then I avoided women. Moreover, I had but to open a book,
and all the impure mists of my brain vanished before the splendors of
science. In a few moments, I felt the gross things of earth flee far
away, and I found myself once more calm, quieted, and serene, in the
presence of the tranquil radiance of eternal truth. As long as the demon
sent to attack me only vague shadows of women who passed occasionally
before my eyes in church, in the streets, in the fields, and who hardly
recurred to my dreams, I easily vanquished him. Alas! if the victory has
not remained with me, it is the fault of God, who has not created man
and the demon of equal force. Listen. One day--"

Here the priest paused, and the prisoner heard sighs of anguish break
from his breast with a sound of the death rattle.

He resumed,--

"One day I was leaning on the window of my cell. What book was I reading
then? Oh! all that is a whirlwind in my head. I was reading. The window
opened upon a Square. I heard a sound of tambourine and music. Annoyed
at being thus disturbed in my revery, I glanced into the Square. What
I beheld, others saw beside myself, and yet it was not a spectacle made
for human eyes. There, in the middle of the pavement,--it was midday,
the sun was shining brightly,--a creature was dancing. A creature so
beautiful that God would have preferred her to the Virgin and have
chosen her for his mother and have wished to be born of her if she
had been in existence when he was made man! Her eyes were black and
splendid; in the midst of her black locks, some hairs through which the
sun shone glistened like threads of gold. Her feet disappeared in their
movements like the spokes of a rapidly turning wheel. Around her head,
in her black tresses, there were disks of metal, which glittered in the
sun, and formed a coronet of stars on her brow. Her dress thick set with
spangles, blue, and dotted with a thousand sparks, gleamed like a summer
night. Her brown, supple arms twined and untwined around her waist, like
two scarfs. The form of her body was su