presume to pray against it.” He was silent, lifted up his hands, and crossed himself; and I said to myself, “God forgive your hypocrisy,” as he went into another walk, and repeated to his companions, “He is mad, irrecoverably mad.” “But how, then?” said several voices. There was a stifled whisper. I saw several heads bent together. I did not know what they were meditating, nor did I care. I was walking alone,--it was a delicious moon-light evening. I saw the moon-beams through the trees, but the trees all looked to me like walls. Their trunks were as adamant, and the interlaced branches seemed to twine themselves into folds that said, “Beyond us there is no passing.” I sat down by the side of a fountain,--there was a tall poplar over it,--I remember their situation well. An elderly priest (who, I did not see, was detached by the party) sat down beside me. He began some common-place observations on the transiency of human existence. I shook my head, and he understood, by a kind of tact not uncommon among Jesuits, that _it would not do_. He shifted the subject, remarked on the beauty of the foliage, and the limpid purity of the fountain. I assented. He added, “Oh that life were pure as that stream!” I sighed, “Oh that life were verdant and fertile to me as that tree!” “But, my son, may not fountains be dried up, and trees be withered?” “Yes, my father,--yes,--the fountain of my life has been dried up, and the green branch of my life has been blasted for ever.” As I uttered these words, I could not suppress some tears. The father seized on what he called the moment when God was breathing on my soul. Our conversation was very long, and I listened to him with a kind of reluctant and stubborn attention, because I had involuntarily been compelled to observe, that he was the only person in the whole community who had never harassed me by the slightest importunity either before my profession or after; and when the worst things were said of me, never seemed to attend; and when the worst things were predicted of me, shook his head and said nothing. His character was unimpeached, and his religious performances as exemplary and punctual as my own. With all this I felt no confidence in him, or in any human being; but I listened to him with patience, and my patience must have had no trivial trial, for, at the end of an hour, (I did not perceive that our conference was permitted quite beyond the usual hour of retirement), he continued repeating, “My dear son, you will become reconciled to the conventual life.” “My father, never, never,--unless this fountain is dried up, and this tree withered, by to-morrow.” “My son, God has often performed greater miracles for the salvation of a soul.”