I remember nothing of the details of the ceremony. I was wrapped in the deepest contemplation. I remember that everything around me seemed filled with light and hope. Whatsoever is granted to the eye of faith in contemplation of heavenly things, was granted that day to me. The feeling was so overwhelming, and so real, that, when the Host touched my lips, I burst into weeping and fainted away.
The Abbé Remy could not understand it at all.
Ever since that day I have felt a deep reverence for all that is holy, a religious worship for everything high and noble; each heavenly spark has kindled within me an inward fire, which has had its outward effect, like the lava in a volcano when the crater is full to bursting.
It took me two or three days to recover from this excitement; and, when the Abbé Grégoire came to see me, I flung myself, crying, into his arms.
"My dear boy," he said, "I would far rather your feelings were less intense, and that they would last longer."
The Abbé Grégoire was full of common-sense.
No, my dear abbé, it did not last. No; for, as I have said, I was not the type of man to practise religion. As a matter of fact, that first communion was the only one I ever made. But—I can say it to the dead as to the living—when the last communion shall come to me, as the pendant of the first, when the hand of the Lord shall have closed the two horizons of my life, and drawn the veil of His love between the nothingness that precedes and the nothingness that follows man's life, He can search every atom of the intermediate space with the most rigorous eye and He will not find in it one evil thought, or one action with which I can reproach myself.