'Tis a strange thing, this life, and all connected with it--time, and joy, and grief, and fear, and hope, and appetite, and satiety! Very, very strange! The wise Eastern people have said that at the root of the Tree of Life lie two worms continually preying on it: the one black, the other white. But alas, alas! there is many another maggot, piercing the bark, eating into the core, drying up the sap, bringing on decay and instruction. I have named a few of them.
One of the most blessed conceptions of the soul is, that in its immortality none of these things can touch it.
He seemed an old man, though probably he had not yet seen near sixty years of age; but there were upon his face many harsh lines--not such as are drawn by hard carking cares and petty anxieties--not such as are imprinted on the face by the claws of grasping, mercenary selfishness; but the deep strong brands of burning passions, fierce griefs, fierce joys, and strong unruly thoughts. Yet the eye was subdued. There was not the light in it that had once been there--the wild, eager light, too intense to be fully sane. There was sadness enough, but little fire.
It would seem that the two--they were the only tenants of the cell--had been talking for some time, and that one of those pauses had taken place in which each man continues for himself the train of thought suggested by what has gone before. The old man looked down upon the ground, with his shaggy eyebrows overhanging his eyes. The young man looked up, as if catching inspiration from above. It was Hope and Memory. At length the old man spoke.
"When one looks back," he said, "upon the path of life, we lose in the mistiness of the distance a thousand objects which have influenced its course. We see it turn hither and thither, and wonder that we took not a course more direct to our end. We perceive that we have gone far out of the way; but the obstacles are not seen that were, or seemed insurmountable--the stream, too deep to be forded--the rock, too high to be scaled--the thicket, too dense to be penetrated; and the mists and darkness too--the mists and darkness of the mind, forever blinding us to the right way. Oh, my son, my son, beware of the eyesight of passion; for you know not how false and distorting it is. The things as plain as day become all dim and obscure, false lights glare around us, and nothing is real but our own sensations."
Jean Charost smiled. "I have escaped as yet, father," he said. "It is true, indeed, that when I look back on some passages of my life--on the actions of other men, and on my own--I sometimes wonder how I could view the things around me as I did at the time, and all seems to me as if I had been acting in a dream."
"Passion, passion," said the monk--"the dream of passion!"
"Happily, I have had no cause to regret that I did not see more clearly," replied Jean Charost; "but let me turn to other matters, good father. There are many things that I would wish to ask you--many that are necessary for me to know."
"Ask me nothing," replied the monk, quickly; then laying his hand upon Jean Charost's arm, he said, in a low, stern voice, "There is a space in memory on which I dare not tread. By struggle and by labor I have reached firm ground, and can stand upon the rock of my salvation; but behind me there is a gulf of madness--You would not drag me back into it, young man?"
"God forbid," replied Jean Charost. "But yet--"