"Yes, by adopting a homoeopathic pharmacopoeia which still makes use of the foulest matter--the extract of wood-lice, the venom of snakes, the poison of the cockchafer, the secretions of the skunk and the matter from pustules, all disguised in sugar of milk to conceal their taste and appearance; the world of letters, in the same way, triturates the most disgusting things to get them swallowed without raising your gorge. There is an incessant manipulation of neighbours' gossip and play-box tittle-tattle, all wrapped up in perfidious good taste to mask their flavour and smell. "These pills of foulness, exhibited in the required doses, act like detergents on the soul, which they almost immediately purge of all trustfulness. I had enough of this regimen, which acted on me only too successfully, and I thought it well to escape from it." "But the pious world, too, is not absolutely free from gossip," said the Abbe, smiling. "No doubt, and I am well aware that devotion does not always sweeten the mind, but-- "The truth is," said he after reflection, "that the assiduous practice of religion generally results in some intense effects on the soul. Only they may be of two kinds. Either it develops the soul's taint and evolves in it the final ferments which putrefy it once for all, or it purifies the spirit and makes it clean and clear and exquisite. It may produce hypocrites or good and saintly people; there is really no medium. "But when such divine husbandry has completely cleansed souls, how guileless and how pure they may be! Nor am I speaking of the Elect, such as I saw at La Trappe--merely of young novices, little priestlings whom I have known. They had eyes like clear glass, undimmed by the haze of a single sin; and, looking into them, behind those eyes you would have seen their open soul burning like a soaring crown of fire framing the smiling face in a halo of white name. "In fact, Jesus simply fills up all the room in their soul. Do not you think, Monsieur l'Abbe, that these youths occupy their bodies just enough for suffering and to expiate the sins of others? Without knowing it, they have been sent into the world to be safe tenements of the Lord, the resting-place where Jesus finds a home after wandering over the frozen steppes of other souls." "Yes," said the Abbe, taking off his spectacles to wipe them on his bandana, "but to acquire so fine a strain of being, how much mortification, penance, and prayer have been needed in the generations that have ended by giving them birth! The spirits of whom you speak are the flower of a stem long nourished in a pious soil. The Spirit, of course, bloweth where it listeth, and may find a saint in the heart of a listless family; but this mode of operation must always be an exception. The novices you have known must certainly have had grandmothers and mothers who frequently incited them to kneel and pray by their side."