“Oh! everybody likes him,” rejoined the father; “he has such delightful questions! Only observe this one in the same place, no. 38: ‘If a man doubt whether he is twenty-one years old, is he obliged to fast?[139] No. But suppose I were to be twenty-one to-night an hour after midnight, and to-morrow were the fast, would I be obliged to fast to-morrow? No; for you were at liberty to eat as much as you pleased for an hour after midnight, not being till then fully twenty-one; and therefore having a right to break the fast-day, you are not obliged to keep it.’” “Well, that is vastly entertaining!” cried I. “Oh,” rejoined the father, “it is impossible to tear one’s self away from the book: I spend whole days and nights in reading it; in fact, I do nothing else.” The worthy monk, perceiving that I was interested, was quite delighted, and went on with his quotations. “Now,” said he, “for a taste of Filiutius, one of the four-and-twenty Jesuits: ‘Is a man who has exhausted himself any way—by profligacy, for example[140]—obliged to fast? By no means. But if he has exhausted himself expressly to procure a dispensation from fasting, will he be held obliged? He will not, even though he should have had that design.’ There now! would you have believed that?” “Indeed, good father, I do not believe it yet,” said I. “What! is it no sin for a man not to fast when he has it in his power? And is it allowable to court occasions of committing sin, or rather, are we not bound to shun them? That would be easy enough, surely.” “Not always so,” he replied; “that is just as it may happen.” “Happen, how?” cried I. “Oho!” rejoined the monk, “so you think that if a person experience some inconvenience in avoiding the occasions of sin, he is still bound to do so? Not so thinks Father Bauny. ‘Absolution,’ says he, ‘is not to be refused to such as continue in the proximate occasions of sin,[141] if they are so situated that they cannot give them up without becoming the common talk of the world, or subjecting themselves to personal inconvenience.’” “I am glad to hear it, father,” I remarked; “and now that we are not obliged to avoid the occasions of sin, nothing more remains but to say that we may deliberately court them.” “Even that is occasionally permitted,” added he; “the celebrated casuist Basil Ponce has said so, and Father Bauny quotes his sentiment with approbation, in his Treatise on Penance, as follows: ‘We may seek an occasion of sin directly and designedly—_primo et per se_—when our own or our neighbor’s spiritual or temporal advantage induces us to do so.’” “Truly,” said I, “it appears to be all a dream to me, when I hear grave divines talking in this manner! Come now, my dear father, tell me conscientiously, do _you_ hold such a sentiment as that?” “No, indeed,” said he, “I do not.” “You are speaking, then, against your conscience,” continued I.