"But," he cried, "with such a system one could not move, one could not eat, nor sleep, for one should never leave the church. There must be time for everything, or the devil take it all!
"No doubt, but a more diligent soul would have refused that excursion, just because it was pleasant; would have avoided it, out of mortification, in a spirit of penance."
"Evidently, but" ... these scruples tortured him; "the fact is," he said, "I might have employed my afternoon more wholesomely than that;" to believe that he had spent it ill was but a step, and he made it. He pelted himself for an hour, sweating with agony, heaping on himself imaginary sins, and entering so far on that road that he ended by suddenly realizing his position and understanding he was out of the right track.
The story of the rosary returned to his memory, and then he blamed himself for allowing himself to be again driven into a corner by the demon. He began to breathe again, to regain his footing, when other attacks equally formidable presented themselves.
It was no longer an insinuation of arguments which ran drop by drop, but a furious rain, which threw itself like an avalanche on his soul. The storm, of which the wave of scruples was only the prelude, burst in its fulness; and in the panic of the first moment, in the violence of the tempest, the enemy unmasked his batteries, and struck him to the heart.
He had got no good from that communion, but he was also too young at it. Ah! indeed, was he to believe that because a priest uttered five Latin words over a bit of unleavened bread, that bread was transubstantiated into the flesh of Christ? That a child should accept such nonsense, might be possible, but that a man past forty should listen to such formidable shams, was excessive; almost disquieting.
And these insinuations lashed him like hail showers: how could bread made of wheat before, have only the appearance of wheat afterwards; what is flesh that is neither seen nor felt; what is a body, which has such ubiquity as to be at the same time on the altars of divers countries; what is that power which is annihilated when the Host is not made of pure wheat?
And this became a regular deluge which overwhelmed him, and yet like an impenetrable pile, that Faith he had acquired without ever having known how, remained immovable, disappeared under torrents of interrogation, but never stirred.
He revolted, and said to himself: "This only proves that the sacramental darkness of the Eucharist cannot be sounded. Moreover, if it were intelligible, it would not be divine. If the God whom we serve could be comprehended by reason, He could not be worth the trouble of serving, said Tauler; and the 'Imitation' declares plainly also at the end of the IVth book that if the works of God were such as man's intelligence could easily grasp, they would cease to be marvellous, and could not be qualified as ineffable."
And a mocking voice replied,