Then a hand was laid on his shoulder, while a gentle, low voice said,
"Your soul is too tired for me to fatigue you with questions, come back at nine o'clock to-morrow, we shall have time before us, we shall not then be hurried by any office; from now till then, think of the story of Calvary; the cross, which was made for the sins of the whole world, lay so heavily on the shoulders of the Saviour, that His knees bent and He fell. A man of Cyrene passed by who helped the Lord to bear it. You, in detesting, in weeping for your sins, have alleviated and rendered lighter, if one may say so, the cross of the burthen of your sins, and having made it less heavy, have thus allowed Our Lord to lift it.
"He has recompensed you by the most astonishing of miracles, the miracle of having brought you here from so far off. Thank Him, then, with all your heart, and be not discomforted. You will say to-day for your penance, the Penitential Psalms, and the Litany of the Saints. I will give you my blessing."
And the prior blessed him and went out. Durtal raised himself up after his tears; what he feared so much had happened; the monk who would take him in hand was impassive, almost dumb. "Alas!" he thought, "my abscesses are ripe, but it needs the cut of a lancet to open them."
"After all," he went on, as he went upstairs to bathe his eyes in his cell, "this Trappist was compassionate at last, not so much in what he said, as the tone in which he said it; then, to be just, he was perhaps confused by my tears; the Abbé Gévresin certainly did not tell Father Etienne that I was taking refuge in La Trappe in order to be converted, let us put ourselves in the place of a man living in God, far from the world, over whose head a shower bath is suddenly discharged.
"Well, we shall see to-morrow;" and Durtal made haste to sponge his face, for it was nearly eleven o'clock and the office of Sext was about to begin.
He went to the chapel, which was almost empty, for the brothers were working at that time in the chocolate factory, and in the fields.
The fathers were in their places in the apse. The prior struck his bell, all signed themselves with a large cross, and on the left, where he could not see, for Durtal had taken the same place as in the morning, near Saint Joseph's altar, a voice arose:
"Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum."
And the other part of the choir answered: