He went, wildly, with great strides. Confession! The prior? Who was the prior? He sought in vain among the fathers whose faces he remembered the one who would hear him.
"My God!" he said, all at once, "but I do not even know how a confession is made."
He sought a deserted corner, where he could recollect himself a little. He was striding along without even knowing how he came there, along a walnut-tree walk with a wall on one side. There were some enormous trees, he hid himself behind the trunk of one of them, and sitting on the moss, turned over the leaves of his prayer-book, and read: "On arriving at the confessional, place yourself on your knees, make the sign of the cross, and ask the priest for his blessing, saying, 'Bless me, Father, for I have sinned;' then recite the Confiteor as far as mea culpa ... and ..."
He stopped, and without any need of probing it his life sprang out in jets of filth.
He shrank from it, there was so much, of every kind, that he was overwhelmed with despair.
Then by an effort of his will he pulled himself together, endeavoured to control and bank up these torrents, to separate them so as to understand them, but one affluent rolled back all the others, ended by overwhelming them, and became the river itself.
And this sin appeared at first ape-like and sly, at school where everyone tempted and corrupted others; then there was all his greedy youth, dragged through tap-rooms, rolled in swine troughs, wallowing in the sinks of prostitution, and then an ignoble manhood. To his regular tasks had succeeded toll paid to his senses, and shameful memories assailed him in a crowd; he recalled to mind how he had sought after monstrous iniquities, his pursuit of artifices aggravating the malice of the act, and the accomplices and agents of his sins passed in file before him.
Among all, at one time, there was a certain Mme. Chantelouve, a demoniacal adulteress who had drawn him headlong into frightful excesses, who had linked him to nameless crimes, sins against holy things, to sacrileges.
"How can I tell all this to the monk?" thought Durtal, terrified by the remembrance; "how can I even express myself, so as to make him understand without defilement?"
Tears rushed from his eyes. "My God, my God!" he sighed, "this is indeed too much."