ostrate worshippers looked up.

And Durtal was thinking,--

"If only He to whom we refused shelter when the Mother who bore Him was
in travail, could find a loving refuge in our souls to-day! But alas!
apart from these nuns, these children, these priests, and these peasant
women who cherish Him so truly, how many here present are, like me,
embarrassed by His presence, and at all times incapable of making ready
the chamber He requires, of receiving Him in a room swept and garnished?

"Alas! to think that things are always the same, always going back to
the beginning! Our souls are still the crafty synagogues who betrayed
Him, and the vile Caiaphas that lurks within us rises up at the very
moment when we fain would be humble and love Him while we pray! My God!
My God! Would it not be better to depart than to drag myself thus, with
such a bad grace, into Thy presence? For, after all, it is all very well
for the Abbe Gevresin to insist that I should communicate, he is not
I--he is not in me; he does not know the wild doings in my hidden lairs,
or the turmoil in my ruins. He believes it to be mere nervelessness,
indolence. Alas! That is not all. There is a dryness, a coldness, which
are not altogether free from a certain amount of irritation and
rebelliousness against the rules he insists on."

The moment of Communion was at hand. The little boy had gently thrown
the white napkin back on the table; the nuns and poor women and peasants
went forward, all with clasped hands and bowed heads, and the child took
a taper and passed in front of the priest, his eyes almost shut for fear
of seeing the Host.

There was in this little creature such a glow of love and reverence that
Durtal gazed with admiration and trembled with awe. Without in the least
knowing why, in the midst of the darkness that fell on his soul, of the
impotent and wavering feeling that thrilled it without there being any
word to describe them, he felt a tide bearing him to the Saviour, and
then a recoil.

The comparison was inevitably forced upon him between that child's soul
and his own. "Why, it is he, not I, who should take the Sacrament!"
cried he to himself; and he crouched there inert, his hands folded, not
knowing how to decide, in a frame at once beseeching and terrified, when
he felt himself gently drawn to the table and received the Sacrament.
And meanwhile he was trying to collect himself, and to pray, and at the
same time, at the same instant, wa