fusal, and I could not bring myself to give a false one. I had
recourse to the services of worthy M. Carbon, who undertook to tell my
story, and so spared me this painful interview. I thought it best to
go right through with the matter when once it had been begun, and I
completed in one day what I had intended to spread over several weeks,
so that on the evening of my return I belonged neither to the Seminary
nor to the Carmelite house.

I was terrified at seeing so many ties destroyed in a few hours, and I
should have been glad to arrest this fatal progress, all too rapid as
I thought; but I was perforce driven forward, and there were no means
of holding back. The days which followed were the darkest of my life.
I was isolated from the whole world, without a friend, an adviser or
an acquaintance, without any one to appeal to about me, and this after
having just left my mother, my native Brittany, and a life gilded with
so many pure and simple affections. Here I am alone in the world, and
a stranger to it. Good-bye for ever to my mother, my little room, my
books, my peaceful studies, and my walks by my mother's side. Good-bye
to the pure and tranquil joys which seemed to bring me so near to God;
good-bye to my pleasant past, good-bye to those faiths which so gently
cradled me. Farewell for me to pure happiness. The past all blotted
out, and as yet no future. And then, I ask myself, will the new world
for which I have embarked receive me? I have left one in which I was
loved and made much of. And my mother, to think of whom was formerly
sufficient to solace me in my troubles, was now the cause of my most
poignant grief. I was, as it were, stabbing her with a knife. O God!
was it then necessary that the path of duty should be so stony? I
shall be derided by public opinion, and with all that the future
unfolded itself before me pale and colourless. Ambition was powerless
to remove the veil of sadness and regrets which infolded my heart. I
cursed the fate which had enveloped me in such fatal contradictions.
Moreover, the gross and pressing requirements of material existence
had to be faced. I envied the fate of the simple souls who are born,
who live and who die without stir or thought, merely following the
current as it takes them, worshipping a God whom they call their
Father. How I detested my reason for having bereft me of my dreams. I
passed some time each evening in the church of St. Sulpice, and there
I did my best t