"When I think of how this being, who is devoted to the lowest duties, prays in church, I long to kneel before him and, like his pigs, kiss his hands!" exclaimed Durtal after a silence.
"Brother Simeon is an angelic being," replied the oblate. "He lives the Unitive life, his soul plunged, drowned in the divine essence. Under a rough exterior an absolutely white soul, a soul without sin, lives in this poor body; it is right that God should spoil him! As I have told you, He has given him all power over the Demon; and in certain cases He allows him also the power of healing by the imposition of hands. He has renewed here the wonderful cures of the ancient saints."
They ceased speaking, and, warned by the bells which were ringing for Vespers, they moved towards the church.
And, coming to himself again, trying to recover, Durtal remained astounded. Monastic life retarded time. How many weeks had he been at La Trappe, and how many days since had he approached the Sacraments? that was lost in the distance. Ah, life was double in these cloisters! And yet he was not tired of it; he had bent himself easily to the hard rule, and, in spite of the scanty meals, he felt no sick headaches or failing; he had never felt so well!—but what remained was a feeling of stifling, of restrained sighs, this burning melancholy for hours, and, more than all, this vague anxiety at listening again within himself, and hearing united in his person the voices of this Trinity, God, the Devil, and Man.
"This is not the peace of the soul I dreamed of—and it is even worse than at Paris," he said to himself, recalling the maddening trial of the rosary—"and yet—how can I explain it? I am happy here all the same."
CHAPTER V.
Rising, somewhat earlier than his wont, Durtal went down to the chapel. The office of Matins was over, but some lay brothers, amongst whom was Brother Simeon, were praying on their knees on the ground.
The sight of this holy swine-herd threw Durtal into a long train of thought. He tried in vain to penetrate into the sanctuary of that soul, hidden like an invisible chapel behind the dunghill rampart of a body; he did not even succeed in representing to himself the docile and clinging soul of this man, who had attained the highest state to which the human creature can reach here below.
"What a power of prayer he has," thought he, as he looked at the old man.