Hesitatingly he confessed that he had from curiosity assisted at a black mass, and that afterwards, without wishing it, he had defiled a Host which that woman, saturated with Satanism, concealed about her.
The prior listened without moving.
"Did you continue your visits to that woman?"
"No; that had given me a horror of her."
The Trappist reflected and said,
"That is all?"
"I think I have confessed everything," replied Durtal.
The confessor was silent for some minutes, and then in a pensive voice, he murmured,
"I am struck, even more than yesterday, by the astonishing miracle which Heaven has worked in you.
"You were sick, so sick that what Martha said of the body of Lazarus might truly have been said of your soul, 'Iam foetet!' And Christ has, in some manner, raised you. Only do not deceive yourself, the conversion of a sinner is not his cure, but only his convalescence; and this convalescence sometimes lasts for several years and is often long.