And he complained to God, telling Him that all the joy he might have felt in being purified and clean at last, was now spoilt by this disappointment.
He arrived at the refectory hanging his head.
The curate was there already. Seeing Durtal's sad demeanour, he charitably tried to cheer him, but the jokes he attempted produced the opposite effect. Durtal smiled in order to be polite, but his air was so wearied that M. Bruno, who saw it, turned the conversation and monopolized the priest.
Durtal was in a hurry for his dinner to be over. He had eaten his egg and was painfully swallowing a warm potato soup made with hot oil, which from its appearance might have been mistaken for vaseline; but he now cared little about his food.
He said to himself, "It is dreadful to carry away an irritating and painful recollection of a first communion—and I know it will haunt me for ever. I know well enough that from a theological point of view it does not matter whether I am dealing with a priest or a Trappist; both are but interpreters between God and me, but yet, I feel very well that it is not at all the same thing. For once at least I need a guarantee of certain holiness, and how can I have it with an ecclesiastic who hawks about jokes like a bagman?" He stopped, remembering that the Abbé Gévresin, fearing this mistrust, had specially sent him to a Trappist monastery. "What a run of ill-luck!" he said to himself.
He did not even hear the conversation which was going on beside him between the curate and the oblate.
He struggled with himself all alone, as he chewed, with his nose in his plate.
"I do not wish to communicate to-morrow," he went on, and he was shocked. He was cowardly, and becoming foolish at the last. Would not the Saviour give Himself to him all the same?
He rose from the table, stirred by a dull anguish, and he wandered in the park and went down the paths as chance led him.
Another idea was now growing in him, an idea that Heaven was inflicting a trial upon him. "I want humility," he repeated. "Well, it is to punish me that I am refused the joy of being sanctified by a monk. Christ has forgiven me, that is much. Why should He do more by taking note of my preferences and granting my wishes?"