why?"

And then one morning, unexpectedly, every thing was plain to him. He saw
quite clearly that he was on the wrong track, and without even seeking
for it he found the right one.

To discover the unknown source of his flaccid longing for he knew not
what, and his inexplicable dissatisfaction, he had only to look back a
little way and pause at La Trappe. He saw now everything had begun
there. Having reached that culminating point of his retrospect, he
could, as it were, stand on a height and command a view of the declining
years since he had left the monastery; and now, gazing at that
descending panorama of his life, he discerned this:--

That from the time of his return to Paris a craving for the cloister had
been incessantly permeating his being; he had unremittingly cherished
the dream of retiring from the world, of living peacefully as a recluse
near to God.

He had, to be sure, only thought of it definitely in the form of
impossible longings and regrets, for he knew full well that neither was
his body strong enough nor his soul staunch enough for him to bury
himself as a Trappist. Still, once started from that spring-board, his
imagination flew off at a tangent, overleaped every obstacle, floated in
discursive reveries where he saw himself as a Friar in some easy-going
convent under the rule of a merciful Order, devoted to liturgies and
adoring art.

He could but shrug his shoulders, indeed, when he came back to himself,
and smile at these dreams of the future which he indulged in hours of
vacuous idleness; but this self-contempt of a man who catches himself in
the very act of flagrant nonsense was nevertheless succeeded by the hope
of not losing all the advantages of an honest delusion; and he could
remount on a chimera which he thought less wild, as leading to a _via
media_, a compromise, fancying that by moderating his ideal he should
find it more attainable.

He assured himself that, in default of a really conventual life, he
might perhaps achieve an illusory imitation of it by avoiding the
turmoil of Paris and burying himself in a hole. And he now saw that he
had completely cheated himself when, on discussing the question as to
whether he should leave Paris and go to settle at Chartres, he had
believed that he was yielding to the Abbe Gevresin's arguments and
Madame Bavoil's urgency.

Certainly, without admitting it, without accounting for it, he had
really acted on the prompting of this cherished