"After all," thought Durtal, as he cut up his beefsteak, "I wonder what she thinks of me; she must certainly suppose me dead or lost; happily I have never met her, and she does not know my address.
"Well," he went on, "there is no use in stirring the mud, it will be time to cleanse it when I am at La Trappe," and he shuddered, for the idea of the confessor again took root in him, and he was obliged to tell himself for the twentieth time that the expected never happens, and to declare that he should find some good fellow of a monk who would listen to him; then he was afraid again, putting things at their worst, and fancying himself turned out, like a mangy dog.
He finished his breakfast, and went to St. Severin; there the crisis declared itself, the overcharged soul gave way, struck down by a congestion of sadness.
He lay on a chair in such a state of depression that he could think no more, he remained inert without the power of suffering, till little by little the soul, recovered from its torpor, came to itself in a flood of tears.
These tears gave him solace; he wept over his lot, thought himself so unhappy, so worthy of pity, that he hoped still more for help, yet he dare not address himself to Christ, whom he thought less accessible, but he spoke in low tones to the Virgin, murmuring that prayer in which Saint Bernard reminds the Mother of Christ that never in human memory was it heard that she abandoned any of those who sought her aid.
He left St. Severin, consoled and more resolved, and, when once at home, was taken up with preparations for departure. Afraid that he would find nothing he wanted down there, he determined to stuff his portmanteau full; he crammed into the corners sugar, packets of chocolate, that he might try to deceive if needful the anguish of a fasting stomach, took towels thinking there would be few at La Trappe, prepared a stock of tobacco and matches; then besides books, paper, pencils, ink, packets of antipyrine, a phial of laudanum, which he wrapped in handkerchiefs and wedged into his slippers.
When he had strapped his portmanteau, he said to himself, looking at the clock: "To-morrow at this time I shall be jolting in a cab, and my seclusion will be near at hand; never mind, I shall do well, in anticipation of bodily ailment, to ask for the confessor as soon as I get there, and suppose that turns out badly, I shall have time to make arrangements and take the train back at once.
"All the same this will not prevent my having a wretched moment this evening when I enter Notre Dame des Victoires," but his anxieties and emotions vanished when the hour of Benediction came. He was seized by the giddy infection of the church, and he wrapped, steeped, and lost himself in the prayer which arose from all those souls, in the chant which went up from every mouth, and when the monstrance was brought forward to make its sign in the air, he felt a vast peace descend upon him.
At evening as he undressed he sighed: "To-morrow I shall lie down in a cell, amazing when I think of it! I should have considered anyone mad, who, a few years ago, had prophesied that I should take refuge in a Trappist monastery; yet now I am going there of my own accord, and yet no, I am going driven by an unknown power, I am going as a whipped cur.
"After all, what a symptom of the time it is! Society must indeed be unclean, if God has no longer the right to be hard, and is reduced to pick up what He finds, and to content Himself with gathering to Himself people like me!"