Brother, you ask me if I have ever loved. Yes. My story is a strange and

terrible one; and though I am sixty-six years of age, I scarcely dare even now to

disturb the ashes of that memory. To you I can refuse nothing; but I should not

relate such a tale to any less experienced mind. So strange were the

circumstances of my story, that I can scarcely believe myself to have ever

actually been a party to them. For more than three years I remained the victim of

a most singular and diabolical illusion. Poor country priest though I was, I led

every night in a dream—would to God it had been all a dream!—a most worldly

life, a damning life, a life of Sardanapalus. One single look too freely cast upon a

woman well-nigh caused me to lose my soul; but finally by the grace of God and

the assistance of my patron saint, I succeeded in casting out the evil spirit that

possessed me. My daily life was long interwoven with a nocturnal life of a

totally different character. By day I was a priest of the Lord, occupied with

prayer and sacred things; by night, from the instant that I closed my eyes I

became a young nobleman, a fine connoisseur in women, dogs, and horses;

gambling, drinking, and blaspheming; and when I awoke at early daybreak, it

seemed to me, on the other hand, that I had been sleeping, and had only dreamed

that I was a priest. Of this somnambulistic life there now remains to me only the

recollection of certain scenes and words which I cannot banish from my

memory; but although I never actually left the walls of my presbytery, one would

think to hear me speak that I were a man who, weary of all worldly pleasures,

had become a religious, seeking to end a tempestuous life in the service of God,

rather than a humble seminarist who has grown old in this obscure curacy,

situated in the depths of the woods and even isolated from the life of the century.

Yes, I have loved as none in the world ever loved—with an insensate and furious passion—so violent that I am astonished it did not cause my heart to

burst asunder. Ah, what nights—what nights!

From my earliest childhood I had felt a vocation to the priesthood, so that all

my studies were directed with that idea in view. Up to the age of twenty-four my

life had been only a prolonged novitiate. Having completed my course of

theology I successively received all the minor orders, and my superiors judged

me worthy, despite my youth, to pass the last awful degree. My ordination was

fixed for Easter week.