And, left alone, he put his head in his hands and sighed: “_O quando finieris et quando cessabis, universa vanitas mundi?_[A] Far from Thee, O God, we are but wandering shadows. There are no greater crimes than those committed against the unity of the faith. Vouchsafe to lead the world back to this blessed unity!” [A] “When wilt thou end, when wilt thou cease to be, oh, ever-present vanity of this world?” When, during the recreation hour after the midday meal, the principal crossed the courtyard, the seminarists were playing a game of football. On the gravelled playground there was a great commotion of ruddy heads poised on stalks like black knife-handles, the jerky gestures of puppets, and shouts and cries in all the rustic dialects of the diocese. The master of method, Abbé Perruque, his cassock tucked up, was joining in the game with the zest of a cloistered peasant, drunk with air and exercise, and in athletic style was kicking from the toe of his buckled shoe the huge ball covered with its leather quarters. At sight of the principal the players stopped. M. Lantaigne made a sign to them to continue. He followed the grove of stunted acacia trees that fringes the courtyard on the side towards the ramparts and the country. Half-way along he met three pupils who, arm in arm, were walking up and down as they talked. Since they usually spent the recreation hours in this way, they were called the peripatetics. M. Lantaigne called one of them, the shortest, a pale-faced lad, with slightly stooping shoulders, a refined and mocking mouth, and timid eyes. He did not hear at first, and his neighbour had to nudge him with an elbow and say to him: “Piédagnel, the principal is calling you.” At this Piédagnel approached Abbé Lantaigne and bowed to him with a half-graceful clumsiness. “My child,” said the principal to him, “you will be so good as to be my server at mass to-morrow.” The young man blushed. It was a coveted honour to serve the principal’s mass. Abbé Lantaigne, his breviary under his arm, went out by the little door that opens on the fields and took the customary road in his walks, a dusty track edged with nettles and thistles that follows the ramparts. He was thinking: “What will become of this poor child, if he is suddenly expelled, ignorant of any sort of manual labour, weak, delicate, and timid? And what grief there will be in his infirm father’s shop!” He walked along over the flints of the barren road. Having reached the mission cross, he took off his hat, wiped the perspiration from his forehead with his silk handkerchief, and said in a low voice: “Oh God, inspire me to act according to Thy interests, whatever it may cost my paternal heart!” At half-past six next morning Abbé Lantaigne was saying the concluding words of the mass in the bare, deserted chapel.