e, but a drizzling rain drove him
for shelter into the cathedral.

After offering his devotions to the Virgin of the Pillar, he seated
himself amid a camp of vacant chairs to meditate.

"Before interrupting the quiet monotony of my life at Chartres by this
journey, shall I not do well to look into myself, if only for a minute,
and take stock of what I have gained before and since settling in this
town?

"The gain to my soul? Alas! it consists less in acquisitions than in
exchanges; I have merely found aridity in the place of indolence; and
the results of the exchange I know only too well; of what use is it to
go through them once more? The gains to my mind seem to me less
distressing and more genuine, and I can make a brief catalogue of them
under three heads: Past, Present, and Future.

"In the Past.--When I least expected it, in Paris, God suddenly seized
me and drew me back to the Church, taking advantage of my love of Art,
of mysticism, of the Liturgy, and of plain-song.

"Still, during the travail of this conversion, I could not study
mysticism anywhere but in books; I knew it only in theory and not in
practice. On the other hand, in Paris, I never heard any but dull,
lifeless music, watered down, as it were, in women's throats, or utterly
disfigured by the choir schools. In most of the churches I found only a
colourless ceremonial, a meagre form of service.

"This was the situation when I set out for La Trappe: under that strict
rule I found mysticism not only in its simplest expression, written out
and set forth in a body of doctrine, but mysticism as a personal
experience, in action, simply an element of life to those monks. I could
convince myself that the science of the soul's perfection was no
delusion, that the assertions of Saint Teresa and Saint John of the
Cross were strictly true, and in that cloister it was also vouchsafed to
me to be familiar with the enjoyment of an authentic ritual and genuine
plain-song.

"In the Present.--At Chartres I have entered on new exercises, I have
followed other traces. Haunted by the matchless grandeur of this
cathedral, under the guidance of a very intelligent and cultivated
priest I have studied religious symbolism, worked up that great science
of the Middle Ages which is in fact a language peculiar to the Church,
expressing by images and signs what the Liturgy expresses in words.

"Or, to be more exact, it would be better to say that part of the
Liturgy which