He had, to be sure, only thought of it definitely in the form of impossible longings and regrets, for he knew full well that neither was his body strong enough nor his soul staunch enough for him to bury himself as a Trappist. Still, once started from that spring-board, his imagination flew off at a tangent, overleaped every obstacle, floated in discursive reveries where he saw himself as a Friar in some easy-going convent under the rule of a merciful Order, devoted to liturgies and adoring art. He could but shrug his shoulders, indeed, when he came back to himself, and smile at these dreams of the future which he indulged in hours of vacuous idleness; but this self-contempt of a man who catches himself in the very act of flagrant nonsense was nevertheless succeeded by the hope of not losing all the advantages of an honest delusion; and he could remount on a chimera which he thought less wild, as leading to a _via media_, a compromise, fancying that by moderating his ideal he should find it more attainable. He assured himself that, in default of a really conventual life, he might perhaps achieve an illusory imitation of it by avoiding the turmoil of Paris and burying himself in a hole. And he now saw that he had completely cheated himself when, on discussing the question as to whether he should leave Paris and go to settle at Chartres, he had believed that he was yielding to the Abbe Gevresin's arguments and Madame Bavoil's urgency. Certainly, without admitting it, without accounting for it, he had really acted on the prompting of this cherished dream. Would not Chartres be a sort of monastic haven, of open cloister, where he could enjoy his liberty and not have to give up his comforts? Would it not, at any rate, for lack of an unattainable hermitage, be a sop thrown to his desires; and supposing he could succeed in reducing his too exorbitant demands, give him the final repose and peace for which he had yearned ever since his return from La Trappe? And nothing of all this had been realized. The unsettled feeling he had experienced in Paris had pursued him to Chartres. He was, as it were, on the march, or perched on a bough; he could not feel at home, but as a man lingering on in furnished rooms, whence he must presently depart. In short, he had deluded himself when he had fancied that a man might make a cell of a solitary room in silent surroundings; the religious jog-trot in a provincial atmosphere had no resemblance to the life of a monastery. There was no illusion or suggestion of the convent. This check, when he recognized it, added to the ardour or his regrets; and the distress which in Paris had lurked latent and ill-defined, developed at Chartres clear and unmistakable. Then began an unremitting struggle with himself.