instead of resuming my reading, I closed the book and fell to thinking. I thought of what St. Augustine says about manual labour for monks, I thought of the order of St. Benedict, of Rancé, and of how the Benedictine order might again return to manual labour. Then, in a moment of weariness, but with my heart still full of the immense grandeur of St. Augustine, I believed I heard a voice from the upper world crying: 'Magister adest et vocat te!' Perhaps it was only an hallucination, only because of St. Augustine, only some unconscious memory of the 'Tolle, lege'; I do not deny this, but, nevertheless, I trembled, trembled like a leaf. And I asked myself fearfully, Does the Lord wish me to become a monk? You know, Padre mio—I have repeated it to you on two or three occasions—that in one particular, at least, this would correspond with the end of my vision. But when you counselled me, as did also Don Giuseppe Flores, not to put faith in this vision, I told you that, to me, another reason for not putting faith in it was that I do not feel myself worthy to be a priest, and, furthermore, that the idea of joining any religious order is strangely repugnant to me. But what if God should enjoin it upon me! What if this great repugnance be but a trial! I wished to speak to you when we were on our way to the Selvas', but you were in haste to be there, and so it was not possible. There, seated on the bundle of fagots under the acacias, I received the last blow. I was weary,
