CHAPTER III
Read Chapter II here.
The swift December dusk had come tumbling clownishly
after its dull day and as he stared through the
dull square of the window of the schoolroom he felt his
belly crave for its food. He hoped there would be stew
for dinner, turnips and carrots and bruised potatoes and
fat mutton pieces to be ladled out in thick peppered
flour-fattened sauce. Stuff it into you, his belly coun-
selled him.
It would be a gloomy secret night. After early night-
fall the yellow lamps would light up, here and there,
the squalid quarter of the brothels. He would follow a
devious course up and down the streets, circling always
nearer and nearer in a tremor of fear and joy, until his
feet led him suddenly round a dark corner. The whores
would be just coming out of their houses making ready
for the night, yawning lazily after their sleep and settling
the hairpins in their clusters of hair. He would pass by
them calmly waiting for a sudden movement of his own
will or a sudden call to his sin-loving soul from their
soft perfumed flesh. Yet as he prowled in quest of that
call, his senses, stultified only by his desire, would note
keenly all that wounded or shamed them ; his eyes, a ring
of porter froth on a clothless table or a photograph of two
soldiers standing to attention on a gaudy playbill; his
ears, the drawling jargon of greeting:
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— Hello, Bertie, any good in your mind?
— Is that you, pigeon?
— Number ten. Fresh Nelly is waiting on you.
— Good night, husband! Coming in to have a short
time?
The equation on the page of his scribbler began to
spread out a widening tail, eyed and starred like a pea-
cock’s; and, when the eyes and stars of its indices had
been eliminated, began slowly to fold itself together
again. The indices appearing and disappearing were
eyes opening and closing; the eyes opening and closing
were stars being born and being quenched. The vast
cycle of starry life bore his weary mind outward to its
verge and inward to its centre, a distant music accom-
panying him outward and inward. What music? The
music came nearer and he recalled the words, the words
of Shelley’s fragment upon the moon wandering com-
panionless, pale for weariness. The stars began to crum-
ble and a cloud of fine star-dust fell through space.
The dull light fell more faintly upon the page whereon
another equation began to unfold itself slowly and to
spread abroad its widening tail. It was his own soul
going forth to experience, unfolding itself sin by sin,
spreading abroad the balefire of its burning stars and
folding back upon itself, fading slowly, quenching its
own lights and fires. They were quenched: and the cold
darkness filled chaos.
A cold lucid indifference reigned in his soul. At his
first violent sin he had felt a wave of vitality pass out
of him and had feared to find his body or his soul
maimed by the excess. Instead the vital wave had carried
him on its bosom out of himself and back again
when it receded: and no part of body or soul had been
[116]
maimed, but a dark peace had been established between
them. The chaos in which his ardour extinguished itself
was a cold indifferent knowledge of himself. He had
sinned mortally not once but many times and he knew
that, while he stood in danger of eternal damnation for
the first sin alone, by every succeeding sin he multiplied
his guilt and his punishment. His days and works and
thoughts could make no atonement for him, the foun-
tains of sanctifying grace having ceased to refresh his
soul. At most, by an alms given to a beggar whose
blessing he fled from, he might hope wearily to win for
himself some measure of actual grace. Devotion had
gone by the board. What did it avail to pray when he
knew that his soul lusted after its own destruction? A
certain pride, a certain awe, withheld him from offering
to God even one prayer at night though he knew it was
in God’s power to take away his life while he slept and
hurl his soul hellward ere he could beg for mercy. His
pride in his own sin, his loveless awe of God, told him
that his offence was too grievous to be atoned for in
whole or in part by a false homage to the Allseeing and
Allknowing.
— Well now, Ennis, I declare you have a head and so
has my stick! Do you mean to say that you are not
able to tell me what a surd is?
The blundering answer stirred the embers of his con-
tempt of his fellows. Towards others he felt neither
shame nor fear. On Sunday mornings as he passed the
church door he glanced coldly at the worshippers who
stood bareheaded, four deep, outside the church, morally
present at the mass which they could neither see nor
hear. Their dull piety and the sickly smell of the cheap
hair oil with which they had anointed their heads re-
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pelled him from the altar they prayed at. He stooped
to the evil of hypocrisy with others, sceptical of their
innocence which he could cajole so easily.
On the wall of his bedroom hung an illuminated scroll,
the certificate of his prefecture in the college of the
sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary. On Saturday
mornings when the sodality met in the chapel to recite
the little office his place was a cushioned kneeling-desk
at the right of the altar from which he led his wing of
boys through the responses. The falsehood of his position
did not pain him. If at moments he felt an impulse
to rise from his post of honour and, confessing before
them all his unworthiness, to leave the chapel, a glance
at their faces restrained him. The imagery of the
psalms of prophecy soothed his barren pride. The
glories of Mary held his soul captive: spikenard and
myrrh and frankincense, symbolising her royal lineage,
her emblems, the late-flowering plant and late-blossom-
ing tree, symbolising the agelong gradual growth of her
cultus among men. When it fell to him to read the
lesson towards the close of the office he read it in a
veiled voice, lulling his conscience to its music.
Quasi cedrus exaltata sum in Libanon et quasi cu-
pressus in monte Sion. Quasi palma exaltata sum in
Gades et quasi plantatio rosae in Jericho. Quasi uliva
speciosa in campis et quasi plantanus exaltata sum juxta
aquam in plateis. Sicut cinnamomum et balsamum
aromatizans odorem dedi et quasi myrrha electa dedi
suavitatem odoris.
His sin, which had covered him from the sight of God,
had led him nearer to the refuge of sinners. Her eyes
[118]
seemed to regard him with mild pity; her holiness, a
strange light glowing faintly upon her frail flesh, did
not humiliate the sinner who approached her. If ever he
was impelled to cast sin from him and to repent, the
impulse that moved him was the wish to be her knight.
If ever his soul, re-entering her dwelling shyly after the
frenzy of his body’s lust had spent itself, was turned
towards her whose emblem is the morning star, “bright
and musical, telling of heaven and infusing peace,” it
was when her names were murmured softly by lips
whereon there still lingered foul and shameful words,
the savour itself of a lewd kiss.
That was strange. He tried to think how it could be
but the dusk, deepening in the schoolroom, covered over
his thoughts. The bell rang. The master marked the
sums and cuts to be done for the next lesson and went
out. Heron, beside Stephen, began to hum tunelessly.
My excellent friend Bombados.
Ennis, who had gone to the yard, came back, saying:
— The boy from the house is coming up for the rector.
A tall boy behind Stephen rubbed his hands and said
— That’s game ball. We can scut the whole hour.
He won’t be in till after half two. Then you can ask
him questions on the catechism, Dedalus.
Stephen, leaning back and drawing idly on his
scribbler, listened to the talk about him which Heron
checked from time to time by saying:
— Shut up, will you. Don’t make such a bally racket!
It was strange too that he found an arid pleasure in
following up to the end the rigid lines of the doctrines
of the church and penetrating into obscure silences only
[119]
to hear and feel the more deeply his own condemnation.
The sentence of Saint James which says that he who
offends against one commandment becomes guilty of all
had seemed to him first a swollen phrase until he had
begun to grope in the darkness of his own state. From
the evil seed of lust all other deadly sins had sprung
forth: pride in himself and contempt of others, covetous-
ness in using money for the purchase of unlawful
pleasures, envy of those whose vices he could not reach
to and calumnious murmuring against the pious, glut-
tonous enjoyment of food, the dull glowering anger amid
which he brooded upon his longing, the swamp of spir-
itual and bodily sloth in which his whole being had sunk.
As he sat in his bench gazing calmly at the rector’s
shrewd harsh face his mind wound itself in and out of
the curious questions proposed to it. If a man had
stolen a pound in his youth and had used that pound to
amass a huge fortune how much was he obliged to give
back, the pound he had stolen only or the pound together
with the compound interest accruing upon it or all his
huge fortune? If a layman in giving baptism pour the
water before saying the words is the child baptised?
Is baptism with a mineral water valid? How comes it
that while the first beatitude promises the kingdom of
heaven to the poor of heart, the second beatitude promises
also to the meek that they shall possess the land?
Why was the sacrament of the eucharist instituted under
the two species of bread and wine if Jesus Christ be
present body and blood, soul and divinity, in the bread
alone and in the wine alone? Does a tiny particle of
the consecrated bread contain all the body and blood
of Jesus Christ or a part only of the body and blood?
If the wine change into vinegar and the host crumble
[120]
into corruption after they have been consecrated, is Jesus
Christ still present under their species as God and as
man?
— Here he is! Here he is!
A boy from his post at the window had seen the
rector come from the house. All the catechisms were
opened and all heads bent upon them silently. The
rector entered and took his seat on the dais. A gentle
kick from the tall boy in the bench behind urged
Stephen to ask a difficult question.
The rector did not ask for a catechism to hear the
lesson from. He clasped his hands on the desks and
said:
— The retreat will begin on Wednesday afternoon in
honour of Saint Francis Xavier whose feast day is
Saturday. The retreat will go on from Wednesday to
Friday. On Friday confession will be heard all the
afternoon after beads. If any boys have special confessors
perhaps it will be better for them not to change.
Mass will be on Saturday morning at nine o’clock and
general communion for the whole college. Saturday will
be a free day. But Saturday and Sunday being free
days some boys might be inclined to think that Monday
is a free day also. Beware of making that mistake. I
think you, Lawless, are likely to make that mistake.
— I, sir? Why, sir?
A little wave of quiet mirth broke forth over the class
of boys from the rector’s grim smile. Stephen’s heart
began slowly to fold and fade with fear like a withering
flower.
The rector went on gravely:
— You are all familiar with the story of the life of
Saint Francis Xavier, I suppose, the patron of your
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college. He came of an old and illustrious Spanish
family and you remember that he was one of the first
followers of Saint Ignatius. They met in Paris where
Francis Xavier was professor of philosophy at the
university. This young and brilliant nobleman and man
of letters entered heart and soul into the ideas of our
glorious founder, and you know that he, at his own
desire, was sent by Saint Ignatius to preach to the
Indians. He is called, as you know, the apostle of the
Indies. He went from country to country in the east,
from Africa to India, from India to Japan, baptising the
people. He is said to have baptised as many as ten
thousand idolators in one month. It is said that his
right arm had grown powerless from having been raised
so often over the heads of those whom he baptised. He
wished then to go to China to win still more souls for
God but he died of fever on the island of Sancian. A
great Saint, Saint Francis Xavier! A great soldier of
God!
The rector paused and then, shaking his clasped hands
before him, went on:
— He had the faith in him that moves mountains.
Ten thousand souls won for God in a single month!
That is a true conqueror, true to the motto of our order:
ad majorem Dei gloriam! A saint who has great power
in heaven, remember: power to intercede for us in our
grief, power to obtain whatever we pray for if it be
for the good of our souls, power above all to obtain for
us the grace to repent if we be in sin. A great saint,
Saint Francis Xavier! A great fisher of souls!
He ceased to shake his clasped hands and, resting
them against his forehead, looked right and left of them
keenly at his listeners out of his dark stem eyes.
[122]
In the silence their dark fire kindled the dusk into a
tawny glow. Stephen’s heart had withered up like a
flower of the desert that feels the simoom coming from
afar.
****
— Remember only thy last things and thou shalt not
sin for ever — words taken, my dear little brothers in
Christ, from the book of Ecclesiastes, seventh chapter,
fortieth verse. In the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Stephen sat in the front bench of the chapel. Father
Arnall sat at a table to the left of the altar. He wore
about his shoulders a heavy cloak; his pale face was
drawn and his voice broken with rheum. The figure of
his old master, so strangely rearisen, brought back to
Stephen’s mind his life at Clongowes: the wide play-
grounds, swarming with boys, the square ditch, the little
cemetery off the main avenue of limes where he had
dreamed of being buried, the firelight on the wall of the
infirmary where he lay sick, the sorrowful face of
Brother Michael. His soul, as these memories came back
to him, became again a child’s soul.
— We are assembled here today, my dear little
brothers in Christ, for one brief moment far away from
the busy bustle of the outer world to celebrate and to
honour one of the greatest of saints, the apostle of the
Indies, the patron saint also of your college. Saint
Francis Xavier. Year after year for much longer than
any of you, my dear little boys, can remember or than I
can remember the boys of this college have met in this
very chapel to make their annual retreat before the feast
day of their patron saint. Time has gone on and brought
with it its changes. Even in the last few years what
[123]
changes can most of you not remember? Many of the
boys who sat in those front benches a few years ago are
perhaps now in distant lands, in the burning tropics or
immersed in professional duties or in seminaries or
voyaging over the vast expanse of the deep or, it may
be, already called by the great God to another life and
to the rendering up of their stewardship. And still as
the years roll by, bringing with them changes for good
and bad, the memory of the great saint is honoured by
the boys of his college who make every year their
annual retreat on the days preceding the feast day set
apart by our Holy Mother the Church to transmit to all
the ages the name and fame of one of the greatest sons
of catholic Spain.
— Now what is the meaning of this word retreat and
why is it allowed on all hands to be a most salutory prac-
tice for all who desire to lead before God and in the eyes
of men a truly Christian life? A retreat, my dear boys,
signifies a withdrawal for a while from the cares of our
life, the cares of this workaday world, in order to ex-
amine the state of our conscience, to reflect on the mys-
teries of holy religion and to understand better why we
are here in this world. During these few days I intend
to put before you some thoughts concerning the four
last things. They are, as you know from your catechism,
death, judgment, hell and heaven. We shall try to un-
derstand them fully during these few days so that we
may derive from the understanding of them a lasting
benefit to our souls. And remember, my dear boys, that
we have been sent into this world for one thing and
for one thing alone: to do God’s holy will and to save
our immortal souls. All else is worthless. One thing
alone is needful, the salvation of one’s soul. What doth
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it profit a man to gain the whole world if he suffer the
loss of his immortal soul? Ah, my dear boys, believe me
there is nothing in this wretched world that can make up
for such loss.
— I will ask you therefore, my dear boys, to put away
from your minds during these few days all worldly
thoughts, whether of study or pleasure or ambition,
and to give all your attention to the state of your souls.
I need hardly remind you that during the days of the
retreat all boys are expected to preserve a quiet and
pious demeanour and to shun all loud unseemly
pleasure. The elder boys, of course, will see that this
custom is not infringed and I look especially to the
prefects and officers of the sodality of Our Blessed Lady
and of the sodality of the Holy Angels to set a good
example to their fellow-students.
— Let us try, therefore, to make this retreat in honour
of St. Francis with our whole heart and our whole mind.
God’s blessing will then be upon all your year’s studies.
But, above and beyond all, let this retreat be one to
which you can look back in after years when, may be,
you are far from this college and among very different
surroundings, to which you can look back with joy and
thankfulness and give thanks to God for having granted
you this occasion of laying the first foundation of a
pious honourable zealous Christian life. And if, as may
so happen, there be at this moment in these benches any
poor soul who has had the unutterable misfortune to
lose God’s holy grace and to fall into grievous sin, I
fervently trust and pray that this retreat may be the
turning-point in the life of that soul. I pray to God
through the merits of His zealous servant Francis Xavier
that such a soul may be led to sincere repentance and
[125]
that the holy communion of St. Francis’ day of this
year may be a lasting covenant between God and that
soul. For just and unjust, for saint and sinner alike,
may this retreat be a memorable one.
— Help me, my dear little brothers in Christ. Help
me by your pious attention, by your own devotion, by
your outward demeanour. Banish from your minds all
worldly thoughts, and think only of the last things,
death, judgment, hell and heaven. He who remembers
these things, says Ecclesiastes, shall not sin for ever.
He who remembers the last things will act and think
with them always before his eyes. He will live a good
life and die a good death, believing and knowing that,
if he has sacrificed much in this earthly life, it will be
given to him a hundredfold and a thousandfold more
in the life to come, in the kingdom without end — a bless-
ing, my dear boys, which I wish you from my heart,
one and all, in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Ghost. Amen!
As he walked home with silent companions a thick fog
seemed to compass his mind. He waited in stupor of
mind till it should lift and reveal what it had hidden.
He ate his dinner with surly appetite and when the meal
was over and the grease-strewn plates lay abandoned on
the table, he rose and went to the window, clearing the
thick scum from his mouth with his tongue and licking
it from his lips. So he had sunk to the state of a beast
that licks his chaps after meat. This was the end; and
a faint glimmer of fear began to pierce the fog of his
mind. He pressed his face against the pane of the win-
dow and gazed out into the darkening street. Forms
passed this way and that through the dull light. And
that was life. The letters of the name of Dublin lay
[126]
heavily upon his mind, pushing one another surily hither
and thither with slow boorish insistence. His soul was
fattening and congealing into a gross grease, plunging
ever deeper in its dull fear into a sombre threatening
dusk, while the body that was his stood, listless and dis-
honoured, gazing out of darkened eyes, helpless, per-
turbed and human for a bovine god to stare upon.
The next day brought death and judgment, stirring
his soul slowly from its listless despair. The faint glim-
mer of fear became a terror of spirit as the hoarse voice
of the preacher blew death into his soul. He suffered
its agony. He felt the death-chill touch the extremities
and creep onward towards the heart, the film of death
veiling the eyes, the bright centres of the brain extin-
guished one by one like lamps, the last sweat oozing upon
the skin, the powerlessness of the dying limbs, the speech
thickening and wandering and failing, the heart throb-
bing faintly and more faintly, all but vanquished, the
breath, the poor breath, the poor helpless human spirit,
sobbing and sighing, gurgling and rattling in the throat.
No help! No help! He — he himself — his body to
which he had yielded was dying. Into the grave with it.
Nail it down into a wooden box, the corpse. Carry it
out of the house on the shoulders of hirelings. Thrust
it out of men’s sight into a long hole in the ground, into
the grave, to rot, to feed the mass of its creeping worms
and to be devoured by scuttling plump-bellied rats.
And while the friends were still standing in tears by
the bedside the soul of the sinner was judged. At the
last moment of conciousness the whole earthly life passed
before the vision of the soul and, ere it had time to
reflect, the body had died and the soul stood terrified
before the judgment seat. God, who had long been
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merciful, would then be just. He had long been patient,
pleading with the sinful soul, giving it time to repent,
sparing it yet awhile. But that time has gone. Time
was to sin and to enjoy, time was to scoff at God and
at the warnings of His holy church, time was to defy
His majesty, to disobey His commands, to hoodwink
one’s fellow men, to commit sin after sin and to hide
one’s corruption from the sight of men. But that time
was over. Now it was God’s turn: and He was not to
be hookwinked or deceived. Every sin would then come
forth from its lurking-place, the most rebellious against
the divine will and the most degrading to our poor
corrupt nature, the tiniest imperfection and the most
heinous atrocity. What did it avail then to have been
a great emperor, a great general, a marvellous inventor,
the most learned of the learned? All were as one before
the judgment seat of God. He would reward the good
and punish the wicked. One single instant was enough
for the trial of a man’s soul. One single instant after
the body’s death, the soul had been weighed in the balance.
The particular judgment was over and the soul
had passed to the abode of bliss or to the prison of pur-
gatory or had been hurled howling into hell.
Nor was that all. God’s justice had still to be vin-
dicated before men: after the particular there still re-
mained the general judgment. The last day had come.
The doomsday was at hand. The stars of heaven were
falling upon the earth like the figs cast by the figtree
which the wind has shaken. The sun, the great
luminary of the universe, had become as sackcloth of
hair. The moon was blood red. The firmament was as
a scroll rolled away. The archangel Michael, the prince
of the heavenly host, appeared glorious and terrible
[128]
against the sky. With one foot on the sea and one foot
on the land he blew from the archangelical trumpet the
brazen death of time. The three blasts of the angel filled
all the universe. Time is, time was, but time shall be no
more. At the last blast the souls of universal humanity
throng towards the valley of Jehosaphat, rich and poor,
gentle and simple, wise and foolish, good and wicked.
The soul of every human being that has ever existed, the
souls of all those who shall yet be born, all the sons and
daughters of Adam, all are assembled on that supreme
day. And lo, the supreme judge is coming! No longer
the lowly Lamb of God, no longer the meek Jesus of
Nazareth, no longer the Man of Sorrows, no longer the
Good Shepherd, He is seen now coming upon the clouds,
in great power and majesty, attended by nine choirs of
angels, angels and archangels, principalities, powers and
virtues, thrones and dominations, cherubim and seraphim,
God Omnipotent, God everlasting. He speaks:
and His voice is heard even at the farthest limits of
space, even in the bottomless abyss. Supreme Judge,
from His sentence there will be and can be no appeal.
He calls the just to His side, bidding them enter into
the Kingdom, the eternity of bliss, prepared for them.
The unjust He casts from Him, crying in His offended
majesty: Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire
which was prepared for the devil and his angels. O,
what agony then for the miserable sinners! Friend is
torn apart from friend, children are torn from their par-
ents, husbands from their wives. The poor sinner holds
out his arms to those who were dear to him in this earthly
world, to those whose simple piety perhaps he made a
mock of, to those who counselled him and tried to lead
him on the right path, to a kind brother, to a loving
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sister, to the mother and father who loved him so dearly.
But it was too late: the just turn away from the wretched
damned souls which now appear before the eyes of all
in their hideous and evil character. O you hypocrites,
O you whited sepulchres, O you who present a smooth
smiling face to the world while your soul within is a foul
swamp of sin, how will it fare with you in that terrible day?
And this day will come, shall come, must come; the
day of death and the day of judgment. It is appointed
unto man to die, and after death the judgment. Death
is certain. The time and manner are uncertain, whether
from long disease or from some unexpected accident; the
Son of God cometh at an hour when you little expect
Him. Be therefore ready every moment, seeing that
you may die at any moment. Death is the end of us all.
Death and judgment, brought into the world by the sin
of our first parents, are the dark portals that close our
earthly existence, the portals that open into the unknown
and the unseen, portals through which every soul must
pass, alone, unaided save by its good works, without
friend or brother or parent or master to help it, alone
and trembling. Let that thought be ever before our
minds and then we cannot sin. Death, a cause of terror
to the sinner, is a blessed moment for him who has
walked in the right path, fulfilling the duties of his
station in life, attending to his morning and evening
prayers, approaching the holy sacrament frequently and
performing good and merciful works. For the pious
and believing catholic, for the just man, death is no cause
of terror. Was it not Addison, the great English writer,
who, when on his deathbed, sent for the wicked young
earl of Warwick to let him see how a christian can meet
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his end. He it is and he alone, the pious and believing
christian, who can say in his heart:
O grave, where is thy victory?
O death, where is thy sting?
Every word of it was for him. Against his sin, foul
and secret, the whole wrath of God was aimed. The
preacher’s knife had probed deeply into his disclosed
conscience and he felt now that his soul was festering
in sin. Yes, the preacher was right. God’s turn had
come. Like a beast in its lair his soul had lain down
in its own filth but the blasts of the angel’s trumpet
had driven him forth from the darkness of sin into the
light. The words of doom cried by the angel shattered
in an instant his presumptuous peace. The wind of
the last day blew through his mind; his sins, the jewel-
eyed harlots of his imagination, fled before the hurricane,
squeaking like mice in their terror and huddled
under a mane of hair.
As he crossed the square, walking homeward, the light
laughter of a girl reached his burning ear. The frail,
gay sound smote his heart more strongly than a trumpet-
blast, and, not daring to lift his eyes, he turned aside
and gazed, as he walked, into the shadow of the tangled
shrubs. Shame rose from his smitten heart and flooded
his whole being. The image of Emma appeared before
him and under her eyes the flood of shame rushed forth
anew from his heart. If she knew to what his mind
had subjected her or how his brute-like lust had torn
and trampled upon her innocence! Was that boyish
love? Was that chivalry? Was that poetry? The
sordid details of his orgies stank under his very nostrils.
[131]
The sootcoated packet of pictures which he had hidden
in the flue of the fireplace and in the presence of whose
shameless or bashful wantonness he lay for hours sin-
ning in thought and deed; his monstrous dreams, peo-
pled by apelike creatures and by harlots with gleaming
jewel eyes; the foul long letters he had written in the
joy of guilty confession and carried secretly for days
and days only to throw them under cover of night among
the grass in the comer of a field or beneath some hinge-
less door or in some niche in the hedges where a girl
might come upon them as she walked by and read them
secretly. Mad! Mad! Was it possible he had done
these things? A cold sweat broke out upon his forehead
as the foul memories condensed within his brain.
When the agony of shame had passed from him he
tried to raise his soul from its abject powerlessness.
God and the Blessed Virgin were too far from him: God
was too great and stern and the Blessed Virgin too pure
and holy. But he imagined that he stood near Emma
in a wide land and, humbly and in tears, bent and kissed
the elbow of her sleeve.
In the wide land under a tender lucid evening sky, a
cloud drifting westward amid a pale green sea of heaven,
they stood together, children that had erred. Their
error had offended deeply God’s majesty though it was
the error of two children; but it had not offended her
whose beauty “is not like earthly beauty, dangerous to
look upon, but like the morning star which is its emblem,
bright and musical.” The eyes were not offended which
she turned upon him nor reproachful. She placed their
hands together, hand in hand, and said, speaking to their
hearts.
— Take hands, Stephen and Emma. It is a beautiful
[132]
evening now in heaven. You have erred but you are
always my children. It is one heart that loves another
heart. Take hands together, my dear children, and you
will be happy together and your hearts will love each
other.
The chapel was flooded by the dull scarlet light that
filtered through the lowered blinds; and through the
fissure between the last blind and the sash a shaft of
wan light entered like a spear and touched the embossed
brasses of the candlesticks upon the altar that gleamed
like the battle-worn mail armour of angels.
Rain was falling on the chapel, on the garden, on the
college. It would rain for ever, noiselessly. The water
would rise inch by inch, covering the grass and shrubs,
covering the trees and houses, covering the monuments
and the mountain tops. All life would be choked off,
noiselessly: birds, men, elephants, pigs, children: noise-
lessly floating corpses amid the litter of the wreckage of
the world. Forty days and forty nights the rain would
fall till the waters covered the face of the earth.
It might be. Why not?
— Hell has enlarged its soul and opened its mouth
without any limits — words taken, my dear little broth-
ers in Christ Jesus, from the book of Isaias, fifth chap-
ter, fourteenth verse. In the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
The preacher took a chainless watch from a pocket
within his soutane and, having considered its dial for
a moment in silence, placed it silently before him on the
table.
He began to speak in a quiet tone.
— Adam and Eve, my dear boys, were, as you know,
our first parents, and you will remember that they were
[133]
created by God in order that the seats in heaven left
vacant by the fall of Lucifer and his rebellious angels
might be filled again. Lucifer, we are told, was a son
of the morning, a radiant and mighty angel; yet he fell:
he fell and there fell with him a third part of the host
of heaven: he fell and was hurled with his rebellious
angels into hell. What his sin was we cannot say.
Theologians consider that it was the sin of pride, the
sinful thought conceived in an instant: non serviam: I
will not serve. That instant was his ruin. He offended
the majesty of God by the sinful thought of one instant
and God cast him out of heaven into hell for ever.
— Adam and Eve were then created by God and placed
in Eden, in the plain of Damascus, that lovely garden
resplendent with sunlight and colour, teeming with
luxuriant vegetation. The fruitful earth gave them her
bounty: beasts and birds were their willing servants:
they knew not the ills our flesh is heir to, disease and
poverty and death: all that a great and generous God
could do for them was done. But there was one con-
dition imposed on them by God: obedience to His word.
They were not to eat of the fruit of the forbidden
tree.
— Alas, my dear little boys, they too fell. The devil,
once a shining angel, a son of the morning, now a foul
fiend came in the shape of a serpent, the subtlest of all
the beasts of the field. He envied them. He, the fallen
great one, could not bear to think that man, a being
of clay, should possess the inheritance which he by his
sin had forfeited for ever. He came to the woman, the
weaker vessel, and poured the poison of his eloquence
into her ear, promising her — O, the blasphemy of that
promise! — that if she and Adam ate of the forbidden
[134]
fruit they would become as gods, nay as God Himself.
Eve yielded to the wiles of the arch tempter. She ate
the apple and gave it also to Adam who had not the
moral courage to resist her. The poison tongue of Satan
had done its work. They fell.
— And then the voice of God was heard in that garden,
calling His creature man to account: and Michael, prince
of the heavenly host, with a sword of flame in his hand,
appeared before the guilty pair and drove them forth
from Eden into the world, the world of sickness and
striving, of cruelty and disappointment, of labour and
hardship, to earn their bread in the sweat of their brow.
But even then how merciful was God! He took pity on
our poor degraded parents and promised that in the
fulness of time He would send down from heaven One
who would redeem them, make them once more children
of God and heirs to the kingdom of heaven: and that
One, that Redeemer of fallen man, was to be God’s only-
begotten Son, the Second Person of the Most Blessed
Trinity, the Eternal Word.
— He came. He was born of a virgin pure, Mary the
virgin mother. He was born in a poor cowhouse in
Judea and lived as a humble carpenter for thirty years
until the hour of his mission had come. And then, filled
with love for men. He went forth and called to men to
hear the new gospel.
— Did they listen? Yes, they listened but would not
hear. He was seized and bound like a common criminal,
mocked at as a fool, set aside to give place to a public
robber, scourged with five thousand lashes, crowned
with a crown of thorns, hustled through the streets by
the Jewish rabble and the Roman soldiery, stripped of
his garments and hanged upon a gibbet and His side
[135]
was pierced with a lance and from the wounded body of
our Lord water and blood issued continually.
— Yet even then, in that hour of supreme agony, Our
Merciful Redeemer had pity for mankind. Yet even
there, on the hill of Calvary, He founded the Holy
Catholic Church against which, it is promised, the gates
of hell shall not prevail. He founded it upon the rock
of ages and endowed it with His grace, with sacraments
and sacrifice, and promised that if men would obey the
word of His Church they would still enter into eternal
life, but if, after all that had been done for them, they
still persisted in their wickedness there remained for
them an eternity of torment: hell.
The preacher’s voice sank. He paused, joined his
palms for an instant, parted them. Then he resumed:
— Now let us try for a moment to realise, as far as we
can, the nature of that abode of the damned which the
justice of an offended God has called into existence for
the eternal punishment of sinners. Hell is a strait and
dark and foul smelling prison, an abode of demons and
lost souls, filled with fire and smoke. The straitness of
this prison house is expressly designed by God to punish
those who refused to be bound by His laws. In earthly
prisons the poor captive has at least some liberty of
movement, were it only within the four walls of his cell
or in the gloomy yard of his prison. Not so in hell.
There, by reason of the great number of the damned, the
prisoners are heaped together in their awful prison, the
walls of which are said to be four thousand miles thick:
and the damned are so utterly bound and helpless that,
as a blessed saint, Saint Anselm, writes in his book on
Similitudes, they are not even able to remove from the
eye a worm that gnaws it.
[136]
— They lie in exterior darkness. For, remember, the
fire of hell gives forth no light. As, at the command of
God, the fire of the Babylonian furnace lost its heat but
not its light so, at the command of God, the fire of hell,
while retaining the intensity of its heat, bums eternally
in darkness. It is a neverending storm of darkness, dark
flames and dark smoke of burning brimstone, amid which
the bodies are heaped one upon another without even
a glimpse of air. Of all the plagues with which the land
of the Pharaohs was smitten one plague alone, that of
darkness, was called horrible. What name, then, shall
we give to the darkness of hell which is to last not for
three days alone but for all eternity?
— The horror of this strait and dark prison is increased
by its awful stench. All the filth of the world, all the
offal and scum of the world, we are told, shall run there
as to a vast reeking sewer when the terrible conflagration
of the last day has purged the world. The brimstone,
too, which burns there in such prodigious quantity fills
all hell with its intolerable stench; and the bodies of the
damned themselves exhale such a pestilential odour that
as Saint Bonaventure says, one of them alone would,
suffice to infect the whole world. The very air of this
world, that pure element, becomes foul and unbreathable
when it has been long enclosed. Consider then what
must be the foulness of the air of hell. Imagine some
foul and putrid corpse that has lain rotting and decom-
posing in the grave, a jellylike mass of liquid corrupt-
tion. Imagine such a corpse a prey to flames, devoured
by the fire of burning brimstone and giving off dense
choking fumes of nauseous loathsome decomposition.
And then imagine this sickening stench, multiplied a
millionfold and a millionfold again from the millions
[137]
upon millions of fetid carcasses massed together in the
reeking darkness, a huge and rotting human fungus.
Imagine all this and you will have some idea of the horror
of the stench of hell.
— But this stench is not, horrible though it is, the great-
Est physical torment to which the damned are subjected.
The torment of fire is the greatest torment to which the
tyrant has ever subjected his fellow creatures. Place
your finger for a moment in the flame of a candle and you
will feel the pain of fire. But our earthly fire was created
by God for the benefit of man, to maintain in him the
spark of life and to help him in the useful arts whereas
the fire of hell is of another quality and was created by
God to torture and punish the unrepentant sinner. Our
earthly fire also consumes more or less rapidly according
as the object which it attacks is more or less combustible
so that human ingenuity has even succeeded in inventing
chemical preparations to check or frustrate its action.
But the sulphurous brimstone which burns in hell is a
substance which is specially designed to burn for ever
and for ever with unspeakable fury. Moreover our
earthly fire destroys at the same time as it burns so that
the more intense it is the shorter is its duration: but the
fire of hell has this property that it preserves that which
it burns and though it rages with incredible intensity it
rages for ever.
— Our earthly fire again, no matter how fierce or widespread
it may be, is always of a limited extent: but the
lake of fire in hell is boundless, shoreless and bottomless.
It is on record that the devil himself, when asked the
question by a certain soldier, was obliged to confess that
if a whole mountain were thrown into the burning ocean
of hell it would be burned up in an instant like a piece
[138]
of wax. And this terrible fire will not afflict the bodies
of the damned only from without but each lost soul will
be a hell unto itself, the boundless fire raging in its very
vitals. O, how terrible is the lot of those wretched
beings! The blood seethes and boils in the veins, the
brains are boiling in the skull, the heart in the breast
glowing and bursting, the bowels a redhot mass of burn-
ing pulp, the tender eyes flaming like molten balls.
— And yet what I have said as to the strength and qual-
ity and boundlessness of this fire is as nothing when com-
pared to its intensity, an intensity which it has as being
the instrument chosen by divine design for the punish-
ment of soul and body alike. It is a fire which proceeds
directly from the ire of God, working not of its own
activity but as an instrument of divine vengeance. As
the waters of baptism cleanse the soul with the body so
do the fires of punishment torture the spirit with the
flesh. Every sense of the flesh is tortured and every
faculty of the soul therewith: the eyes with impenetrable
utter darkness, the nose with noisome odours, the ears
with yells and howls and execrations, the taste with
foul matter, leprous corruption, nameless suffocating
filth, the touch with redhot goads and spikes, with cruel
tongues of flame. And through the several torments of
the senses the immortal soul is tortured eternally in its
very essence amid the leagues upon leagues of glowing
fires kindled in the abyss by the offended majesty of the
Omnipotent God and fanned into everlasting and ever
increasing fury by the breath of the anger of the God-
head.
— Consider finally that the torment of this infernal
prison is increased by the company of the damned them-
selves. Evil company on earth is so noxious that the
[139]
plants, as if by instinct, withdraw from the company of
whatsoever is deadly or hurtful to them. In hell all laws
are overturned — there is no thought of family or coun-
try, of ties, of relationships. The damned howl and
scream at one another, their torture and rage intensified
by the presence of beings tortured and raging like them-
selves. All sense of humanity is forgotten. The yells of
the suffering sinners fill the remotest corners of the vast
abyss. The mouths of the damned are full of blasphemies
against God and of hatred for their fellow sufferers and
of curses against those souls which were their accomplices
in sin. In olden times it was the custom to punish the
parricide, the man who had raised his murderous hand
against his father, by casting him into the depths of the
sea in a sack in which were placed a cock, a monkey and a
serpent. The intention of those law-givers who framed
such a law, which seems cruel in our times, was to punish
the criminal by the company of hurtful and hateful
beasts. But what is the fury of those dumb beasts com-
pared with the fury of execration which bursts from the
parched lips and aching throats of the damned in hell
when they behold in their companions in misery those
who aided and abetted them in sin, those whose words
sowed the first seeds of evil thinking and evil living in
their minds, those whose immodest suggestions led them
on to sin, those whose eyes tempted and allured them
from the path of virtue. They turn upon those accom-
plices and upbraid them and curse them. But they are
helpless and hopeless: it is too late now for repentance.
— Last of all consider the frightful torment to those
damned souls, tempters and tempted alike, of the company
of the devils. These devils will afflict the damned
in two ways, by their presence and by their reproaches.
[140]
We can have no idea of how horrible these devils are.
Saint Catherine of Siena once saw a devil, and she has
written that, rather than look again for one single in-
stant on such a frightful monster, she would prefer to
walk until the end of her life along a track of red coals.
These devils, who were once beautiful angels, have be-
come as hideous and ugly as they once were beautiful.
They mock and jeer at the lost souls whom they
dragged down to ruin. It is they, the foul demons, who
are made in hell the voices of conscience. Why did you
sin? Why did you lend an ear to the temptings of
friends? Why did you turn aside from your pious
practices and good works? Why did you not shun the
occasions of sin? Why did you not leave that evil
companion? Why did you not give up that lewd habit,
that impure habit? Why did you not listen to the
counsels of your confessor? Why did you not, even after
you had fallen the first or the second or the third or the
fourth or the hundredth time, repent of your evil ways
and turn to God who only waited for your repentance to
absolve you of your sins? Now the time for repentance
has gone by. Time is, time was, but time shall be no
more! Time was to sin in secrecy, to indulge in that
sloth and pride, to covet the unlawful, to yield to the
promptings of your lower nature, to live like the beasts
of the field, nay worse than the beasts of the field for
they, at least, are but brutes and have not reason to
guide them: time was but time shall be no more. God
spoke to you by so many voices but you would not hear.
You would not crush out that pride and anger in your
heart, you would not restore those ill-gotten goods, you
would not obey the precepts of your holy church nor
attend to your religious duties, you would not abandon
[141]
those wicked companions, you would not avoid those
dangerous temptations. Such is the language of those
fiendish tormentors, words of taunting and of reproach,
of hatred and of disgust. Of disgust, Yes! For even
they, the very devils, when they sinned, sinned by such a
sin as alone was compatible with such angelical natures, a
rebellion of the intellect: and they, even they, the foul
devils must turn away, revolted and disgusted, from the
contemplation of those unspeakable sins by which de-
graded man outrages and defiles the temple of the Holy
Ghost, defiles and pollutes himself.
— O, my dear little brothers in Christ, may it never be
our lot to hear that language! May it never be our lot,
I say! In the last day of terrible reckoning I pray
fervently to God that not a single soul of those who are
in this chapel today may be found among those miser-
able beings whom the Great Judge shall command to
depart for ever from His sight, that not one of us may
ever hear ringing in his ears the awful sentence of re-
jection: Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire
which was prepared for the devil and his angels! —
He came down the aisle of the chapel, his legs shaking
and the scalp of his head trembling as though it had
been touched by ghostly fingers. He passed up the stair-
case and into the corridor along the walls of which the
overcoats and waterproofs hung like gibbeted male-
factors, headless and dripping and shapeless. And at
every step he feared that he had already died, that his
soul had been wrenched forth of the sheath of his body,
that he was plunging headlong through space.
He could not grip the floor with his feet and sat
heavily at his desk, opening one of his books at random
and poring over it. Every word for him! It was true.
[142]
God was almighty. God could call him now, call him as
he sat at his desk, before he had time to be conscious of
the summons. God had called him. Yes? What?
Yes? His flesh shrank together as it felt the approach of
the ravenous tongues of flames, dried up as it felt about
it the swirl of stifling air. He had died. Yes. He was
judged. A wave of fire swept through his body: the first.
Again a wave. His brain began to glow. Another. His
brain was simmering and bubbling within the cracking
tenement of the skull. Flames burst forth from his skull
like a corolla, shrieking like voices:
— Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell! –
Voices spoke near him:
— On hell.—
— I suppose he rubbed it into you well.—
— You bet he did. He put us all into a blue funk.—
— That’s what you fellows want: and plenty of it to
make you work.—
He leaned back weakly in his desk. He had not died.
God had spared him still. He was still in the familiar
world of the school. Mr Tate and Vincent Heron stood
at the window, talking, jesting, gazing out at the bleak
rain, moving their heads.
— I wish it would clear up. I had arranged to go for
a spin on the bike with some fellows out by Malahide.
But the roads must be kneedeep.—
— It might clear up, sir.—
The voices that he knew so well; the common words,
the quiet of the classroom when the voices paused and
the silence was filled by the sound of softly browsing
cattle as the other boys munched their lunches tranquilly
lulled his aching soul.
There was still time. O Mary, refuge of sinners, in-
[143]
tercede for him! O Virgin Undefiled, save him from
the gulf of death!
The English lesson began with the hearing of the
history. Royal persons, favourites, intriguers, bishops,
passed like mute phantoms behind their veil of names.
All had died: all had been judged. What did it profit a
man to gain the whole world if he lost his soul? At last
he had understood: and human life lay him, a
plain of peace whereon antlike men laboured in brother-
hood, their dead sleeping under quiet mounds. The
elbow of his companion touched him and his heart was
touched: and when he spoke to answer a question of his
master he heard his own voice full of the quietude of
humility and contrition.
His soul sank back deeper into depths of contrite
peace, no longer able to suffer the pain of dread, and
sending forth, as she sank, a faint prayer. Ah yes, he
would still be spared; he would repent in his heart and
be forgiven; and then those above, those in heaven,
would see what he would do to make up for the past: a
whole life, every hour of life. Only wait.
— All, God! All, all! —
A messenger came to the door to say that confessions
were being heard in the chapel. Four boys left the
room; and he heard others passing down the corridor.
A tremulous chill blew round his heart, no stronger than
a little wind, and yet, listening and suffering silently, he
seemed to have laid an ear against the muscle of his own
heart, feeling it close and quail, listening to the flutter
of its ventricles.
No escape. He had to confess, to speak out in words
What he had done and thought sin after sin. How?
How?
[144]
— Father, I . . . —
The thought slid like a cold shining rapier into his
tender flesh: confession. But not there in the chapel of
the college. He would confess all, every sin of deed
and thought, sincerely: but not there among his school
companions. Far away from there in some dark place
he would murmur out his own shame: and he besought
God humbly not to be offended with him if he did not
dare to confess in the college chapel: and in utter abjec-
tion of spirit he craved forgiveness mutely of the boyish
hearts about him.
Time passed.
He sat again in the front bench of the chapel. The
daylight without was already failing and, as it fell
slowly through the dull red blinds, it seemed that the sun
of the last day was going down and that all souls were
being gathered for the judgment.
— I am cast away from the sight of Thine eyes: words
taken, my dear little brothers in Christ, from the Book
of Psalms, thirtieth chapter, twenty-third verse, In the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost. Amen.
The preacher began to speak in a quiet friendly tone.
His face was kind and he joined gently the fingers of
each hand, forming a frail cage by the union of their
tips.
— This morning we endeavoured, in our reflection
upon hell, to make what our holy founder calls in his
book of spiritual exercises, the composition of place.
We endeavoured, that is, to imagine with the senses of
the mind, in our imagination, the material character of
that awful place and of the physical torments which all
who are in hell endure. This evening we shall consider
[145]
for a few moments the nature of the spiritual torments
of hell.
— Sin, remember, is a twofold enormity. It is a base
consent to the promptings of our corrupt nature to the
lower instincts, to that which is gross and beastlike;
and it is also a turning away from the counsel of our
higher nature, from all that is pure and holy, from the
Holy God Himself. For this reason mortal sin is
punished in hell by two different forms of punishment,
physical and spiritual.
Now of all these spiritual pains by far the greatest
is the pain of loss, so great, in fact, that in itself it is
a torment greater than all the others. Saint Thomas,
the greatest doctor of the Church, the angelic doctor, as
he is called, says that the worst damnation consists in
this that the understanding of man is totally deprived
of Divine light and his affection obstinately turned
away from the goodness of God. God, remember, is a
being infinitely good and therefore the loss of such a
being must be a loss infinitely painful. In this life we
have not a very clear idea of what such a loss must be
but the damned in hell, for their greater torment, have
a full understanding of that which they have lost and
understand that they have lost it through their own sins
and have lost it for ever. At the very instant of death
the bonds of the flesh are broken asunder and the soul
at once flies towards God as towards the centre of her
existence. Remember, my dear little boys, our souls
long to be with God. We come from God, we live by
God, we belong to God: we are His, inalienably His.
God loves with a divine love every human soul and
every human soul lives in that love. How could it be
otherwise? Every breath that we draw, every thought
[146]
of our brain, every instant of life proceed from God’s
inexhaustible goodness. And if it be pain for a mother
to be parted from her child, for a man to be exiled from
hearth and home, for friend to be sundered from friend,
O think what pain, what anguish, it must be for the
poor soul to be spurned from the presence of the
supremely good and loving Creator Who had called that
soul into existence from nothingness and sustained it
in life and loved it with an immeasurable love. This,
then, to be separated for ever from its greatest good,
from God, and to feel the anguish of that separation,
knowing full well that it is unchangeable, this is the
greatest torment which the created soul is capable of
bearing, poena damni, the pain of loss.
The second pain which will afflict the souls of the
damned in hell is the pain of conscience. Just as in dead
bodies worms are engendered by putrefaction so in the
souls of the lost there arises a perpetual remorse from
the putrefaction of sin, the sting of conscience, the
worm, as Pope Innocent the Third calls it, of the triple
sting. The first sting inflicted by this cruel worm will
be the memory of past pleasures. O what a dreadful
memory will that be! In the lake of alldevouring flame
the proud king will remember the pomps of his court,
the wise but wicked man his libraries and instruments
of research, the lover of artistic pleasures his marbles
and pictures and other art treasures, he who delighted
in the pleasures of the table his gorgeous feasts, his
dishes prepared with such delicacy, his choice wires, the
miser will remember his hoard of gold, the robber his
illgotten wealth, the angry and revengeful and merciless
murderers their deeds of blood and violence in which they
revelled, the impure and adulterous the unspeakably
[147]
and filthy pleasures in which they delighted. They will
remember all this and loathe themselves and their sins.
For how miserable will all those pleasures seem to the
soul condemned to suffer in hell-fire for ages and ages.
How they will rage and fume to think that they have
lost the bliss of heaven for the dross of earth, for a few
pieces of metal, for vain honours, for bodily comforts,
for a tingling of the nerves. They will repent indeed:
and this is the second sting of the worm of conscience,
a late and fruitless sorrow for sins committed. Divine
justice insists that the understanding of those miserable
wretches be fixed continually on the sins of which they
were guilty and moreover, as Saint Augustine points out,
God will impart to them His own knowledge of sin so
that sin will appear to them in all its hideous malice as
it appears to the eyes of God Himself. They will be-
hold their sins in all their foulness and repent but it
will be too late and then they will bewail the good oc-
casions which they neglected. This is the last and deep-
est and most cruel sting of the worm of conscience. The
conscience will say: You had time and opportunity to
repent and would not. You were brought up religiously
by your parents. You had the sacraments and graces
and indulgences of the church to aid you. You had the
minister of God to preach to you to call you back when
you had strayed, to forgive you your sins, no matter how
many, how abominable, if only you had confessed and
repented. No. You would not. You flouted the min-
isters of holy religion, you turned your back on the con-
fessional, you wallowed deeper and deeper in the mire of
sin. God appealed to you, threatened you, entreated you
to return to him. O, what shame, what misery! The
Ruler of the universe entreated you, a creature of clay,
[148]
to love Him Who made you and to keep His law. No.
You would not. And now, though you were to flood all
hell with your tears if you could still weep, all that sea
of repentance would not gain for you what a single tear
of true repentance shed during your mortal life would
have gained for you. You implore now a moment of
earthly life wherein to repent: in vain. That time is
gone : gone for ever.
— Such is the threefold sting of conscience, the viper
which gnaws the very heart’s core of the wretches in
hell so that filled with hellish fury they curse themselves
for their folly and curse the evil companions who have
brought them to such ruin and curse the devils who
tempted them in life and now mock them in eternity
and even revile and curse the Supreme Being Whose
goodness and patience they scorned and slighted but
Whose justice and power they cannot evade.
— The next spiritual pain to which the damned are
subjected is the pain of extension. Man, in this earthly
life, though he be capable of many evils, is not capable
of them all at once inasmuch as one evil corrects and
counteracts another, just as one poison frequently cor-
rects another. In hell, on the contrary, one torment,
instead of counteracting another, lends it still greater
force: and, moreover, as the internal faculties are more
perfect than the external senses, so are they more
capable of suffering. Just as every sense is afflicted with
a fitting torment so is every spiritual faculty; the
fancy with horrible images, the sensitive faculty with
alternate longing and rage, the mind and understanding
with an interior darkness more terrible even than the
exterior darkness which reigns in that dreadful prison.
The malice, impotent though it be, which possesses
[149]
those demon souls is an evil of boundless extension, of
limitless duration, a frightful state of wickedness which
we can scarcely realise unless we bear in mind the
enormity of sin and the hatred God bears to it.
— Opposed to this pain of extension and yet co-exist-
ent with it we have the pain of intensity. Hell is the cen-
tre of evils and, as you know, things are more intense at
their centres than at their remotest points. There are
no contraries or admixtures of any kind to temper or
soften in the least the pains of hell. Nay, things which
are good in themselves become evil in hell. Company,
elsewhere a source of comfort to the afflicted, will be
there a continual torment: knowledge, so much longed
for as the chief good of the intellect, will there be hated
worse than ignorance: light, so much coveted by all
creatures from the lord of creation down to the humblest
plant in the forest, will be loathed intensely. In this
life our sorrows are either not very long or not very
great because nature either overcomes them by habits
or puts an end to them by sinking under their weight.
But in hell the torments cannot be overcome by habit,
for while they are of terrible intensity they are at the
same time of continual variety, each pain, so to speak,
taking fire from another and re-endowing that which
has enkindled it with a still fiercer flame. Nor can
nature escape from these intense and various tortures
by succumbing to them for the soul is sustained and
maintained in evil so that its suffering may be the
greater. Boundless extension of torment, incredible in-
tensity of suffering, unceasing variety of torture — this
is what the divine majesty, so outraged by sinners,
demands, this is what the holiness of heaven, slighted
and set aside for the lustful and low pleasures of the
[150]
Corrupt flesh, requires, this is what the blood of the
Innocent Lamb of God, shed for the redemption of sin-
ners, trampled upon by the vilest of the vile, insists upon.
— Last and crowning torture of all the tortures of that
awful place is the eternity of hell. Eternity! O, dread
and dire word. Eternity! What mind of man can
understand it? And remember, it is an eternity of
pain. Even though the pains of hell were not so ter-
rible as they are yet they would become infinite as they
are destined to last for ever. But while they are ever-
lasting they are at the same time, as you know, in-
tolerably intense, unbearably extensive. To bear even
the sting of an insect for all eternity would be a dread-
ful torment. What must it be, then, to bear the mani-
fold tortures of hell for ever? For ever! For all
eternity! Not for a year or for an age but for ever.
Try to imagine the awful meaning of this. You have
often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its
tiny grains! And how many of those tiny little grains
go to make up the small handful which a child grasps
in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a
million miles high, reaching from the earth to the
farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending
to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness: and
imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles
of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the
forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on
birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the
vast expanse of the air: and imagine that at the end of
every million years a little bird came to that mountain
and carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand.
How many millions upon millions of centuries would
[151]
pass before that bird had carried away even a square
foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of
ages before it had carried away all. Yet at the end of
that immense stretch of time not even one instant of
eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of
all those billions and trillions of years eternity would
have scarcely begun. And if that mountain rose again
after it had been all carried away and if the bird came
again and carried it all away again grain by grain:
and if it so rose and sank as many times as there are
stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the
sea, leaves on the tree, feathers upon birds, scales
upon fish, hairs upon animals, at the end of all those
innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasur-
ably vast mountain not one single instant of eternity
could be said to have ended; even then, at the end of
such a period, after that eon of time the mere thought
of which makes our very brain reel dizzily, eternity
would have scarcely begun.
— A holy saint (one of our own fathers I believe it
was) was once vouchsafed a vision of hell. It seemed
to him that he stood in the midst of a great hall, dark
and silent save for the ticking of a great clock. The
ticking went on unceasingly; and it seemed to this
saint that the sound of the ticking was the ceaseless
repetition of the words: ever, never; ever, never. Ever
to be in hell, never to be in heaven; ever to be shut off
from the presence of God, never to enjoy the beatific
vision; ever to be eaten with flames, gnawed by vermin,
goaded with burning spikes, never to be free from those
pains; ever to have the conscience upbraid one, the mem-
ory enrage, the mind filled with darkness and despair,
never to escape; ever to curse and revile the foul de-
[152]
mons who gloat fiendishly over the misery of their dupes,
never to behold the shining raiment of the blessed
spirits; ever to cry out of the abyss of fire to God for
an instant, a single instant, of respite from such awful
agony, never to receive, even for an instant, God’s par-
don; ever to suffer, never to enjoy; ever to be damned,
never to be saved; ever, never; ever, never. O, what a
dreadful punishment! An eternity of endless agony, of
endless bodily and spiritual torment, without one ray of
hope, without one moment of cessation, of agony limit-
less in intensity, of torment infinitely varied, of torture
that sustains eternally that which it eternally devours,
of anguish that everlastingly preys upon the spirit while
it racks the flesh, an eternity, every instant of which is
itself an eternity of woe. Such is the terrible punish-
ment decreed for those who die in mortal sin by an al-
mighty and a just God.
— Yes, a just God! Men, reasoning always as men,
are astonished that God should mete out an everlasting
and infinite punishment in the fires of hell for a single
grievous sin. They reason thus because, blinded by the
gross illusion of the flesh and the darkness of human
understanding they are unable to comprehend the hide-
ous malice of mortal sin. They reason thus because they
are unable to comprehend that even venial sin is of such
a foul and hideous nature that even if the omnipotent
Creator could end all the evil and misery in the world
the wars, the diseases, the robberies, the crime, the
deaths, the murders, on condition that he allowed a sin-
gle venial sin to pass unpunished, a single venial sin,
a lie, an angry look, a moment of wilful sloth. He, the
great omnipotent God could not do so because sin, be it
in thought or deed, is a transgression of His law and
[153]
God would not be God if He did not punish the trans-
gressor.
— A sin, an instant of rebellious pride of the intellect,
made Lucifer and a third part of the cohorts of angels
fall from their glory. A sin, an instant of folly and
weakness, drove Adam and Eve out of Eden and
brought death and suffering into the world. To retrieve
the consequences of that sin the Only Begotten Son of
God came down to earth, lived and suffered and died a
most painful death, hanging for three hours on the cross.
— O, my dear little brethren in Christ Jesus, will we
then offend that good Redeemer and provoke His anger?
Will we trample again upon that torn and man-
gled corpse? Will we spit upon that face so full of
sorrow and love? Will we too, like the cruel Jews and
the brutal soldiers, mock that gentle and compassionate
Saviour Who trod alone for our sake the awful winepress
of sorrow? Every word of sin is a wound in His tender
side. Every sinful act is a thorn piercing His head.
Every impure thought, deliberately yielded to, is a keen
lance transfixing that sacred and loving heart. No, no.
It is impossible for any human being to do that which
offends so deeply the divine Majesty, that which is pun-
ished by an eternity of agony, that which crucifies again
the Son of God and makes a mockery of Him.
— I pray to God that my poor words may have availed
today to confirm in holiness those who are in a state
of grace, to strengthen the wavering, to lead back to
the state of grace the poor soul that has strayed if any
such be among you. I pray to God, and do you pray
with me, that we may repent of our sins. I will ask
you now, all of you, to repeat after me the act of con-
trition, kneeling here in this humble chapel in the pre-
[154]
sence of God. He is there in the tabernacle burning
with love for mankind, ready to comfort the afflicted.
Be not afraid. No matter how many or how foul the
sins if only you repent of them they will be forgiven
you. Let no worldly shame hold you back. God is
still the merciful Lord who wishes not the eternal death
of the sinner but rather that he be converted and
live.
— He calls you to Him. You are His. He made you
out of nothing. He loved you as only a God can love.
His arms are open to receive you even though you have
sinned against Him. Come to Him, poor sinner, poor
vain and erring sinner. Now is the acceptable time.
Now is the hour.
The priest rose and turning towards the altar knelt
upon the step before the tabernacle in the fallen gloom.
He waited till all in the chapel had knelt and every least
noise was still. Then, raising his head, he repeated the
act of contrition, phrase by phrase, with fervour. The
boys answered him phrase by phrase. Stephen, his
tongue cleaving to his palate, bowed his head, praying
with his heart.
— O my God!—
— O my God!—
— I am heartily sorry —
— I am heartily sorry —
— for having offended Thee —
— for having offended Thee —
— and I detest my sins —
— and I detest my sins —
— above every other evil —
— above every other evil —
[155]
— because they displease Thee, my God —
— because they displease Thee, my God —
— Who art so deserving —
— Who art so deserving —
— of all my love —
— of all my love —
— and I firmly purpose —
— and I firmly purpose —
— by Thy Holy grace —
— by Thy Holy grace —
— never more to offend Thee —
— never more to offend Thee —
— and to amend my life —
— and to amend my life —
****
He went up to his room after dinner in order to be
alone with his soul: and at every step his soul seemed
to sigh: at every step his soul mounted with his feet,
sighing in the ascent, through a region of viscid gloom.
He halted on the landing before the door and then,
grasping the porcelain knob, opened the door quickly.
He waited in fear, his soul pining within him, praying
silently that death might not touch his brow as he
passed over the threshold, that the fiends that inhabit
darkness might not be given power over him. He
waited still at the threshold as at the entrance to some
dark cave. Faces were there; eyes: they waited and
watched.
— We knew perfectly well of course that although it
was bound to come to the light he would find consider-
able difficulty in endeavouring to try to induce himself
to try to endeavour to ascertain the spiritual plenipo-
tentiary and so we knew of course perfectly well —
[156]
Murmuring faces waited and watched; murmurous
voices filled the dark shell of the cave. He feared in-
tensely in spirit and in flesh but, raising his head bravely,
he strode into the room firmly. A doorway, a room, the
same room, same window. He told himself calmly that
those words had absolutely no sense which had seemed
to rise murmurously from the dark. He told himself
that it was simply his room with the door open.
He closed the door and, walking swiftly to the bed,
knelt beside it and covered his face with his hands.
His hands were cold and damp and his limbs ached
with chill. Bodily unrest and chill and weariness beset
him, routing his thoughts. Why was he kneeling there
like a child saying his evening prayers? To be alone
with his soul, to examine his conscience, to meet his sins
face to face, to recall their times and manners and
circumstances, to weep over them. He could not weep.
He could not summon them to his memory. He felt
only an ache of soul and body, his whole being, memory,
will, understanding, flesh, benumbed and weary.
That was the work of devils, to scatter his thoughts
and overcloud his conscience, assailing him at the gates
of the cowardly and sin corrupted flesh: and, praying
God timidly to forgive him his weakness, he crawled
up on to the bed and, wrapping the blankets closely
about him, covered his face again with his hands. He
had sinned. He had sinned so deeply against heaven
and before God that he was not worthy to be called God’s
child.
Could it be that he, Stephen Dedalus, had done those
things? His conscience sighed in answer. Yes, he had
done them, secretly, filthily, time after time and, hard-
ened in sinful impenitence, he had dared to wear the
[157]
mask of holiness before the tabernacle itself while his
soul within was a living mass of corruption. How came
it that God had not struck him dead ? The leprous com-
pany of his sins closed about him, breathing upon him,
bending over him from all sides. He strove to forget
them in an act of prayer, huddling his limbs closer to-
gether and binding down his eyelids: but the senses of
his soul would not be bound and, though his eyes were
shut fast, he saw the places where he had sinned and,
though his ears were tightly covered, he heard. He de-
sired with all his will not to hear nor see. He desired
till his frame shook under the strain of his desire and
until the senses of his soul closed. They closed for an
instant and then opened. He saw.
A field of stiff weeds and thistles and tufted nettle-
bunches. Thick among the tufts of rank stiff growth
lay battered canisters and clots and coils of solid excre-
ment. A faint marsh light struggling upwards from
all the ordure through the bristling grey green weeds.
An evil smell, faint and foul as the light, curled up-
wards sluggishly out of the canisters and from the stale
crusted dung.
Creatures were in the field; one, three, six: creatures
were moving in the field, hither and thither. Goatish
creatures with human faces, horny browed, lightly
bearded and grey as indiarubber. The malice of evil
glittered in their hard eyes, as they moved hither and
thither, trailing their long tails behind them. A rictus
of cruel malignity lit up greyly their old bony faces.
One was clasping about his ribs a torn flannel waist-
coat, another complained monotonously as his beard
stuck in the tufted weeds. Soft language issued from
their spittleless lips as they swished in slow circles round
[158]
and round the field, winding hither and thither through
the weeds, dragging their long tails amid the rattling
canisters. They moved in slow circles, circling closer
and closer to enclose, to enclose, soft language issuing
from their lips, their long swishing tails besmeared with
stale shite, thrusting upwards their terrific faces . . .
Help!
He flung the blankets from him madly to free his face
and neck. That was his hell. God had allowed him to
see the hell reserved for his sins: stinking, bestial, ma-
lignant, a hell of lecherous goatish fiends. For him!
For him!
He sprang from the bed, the reeking odour pouring
down his throat, clogging and revolting his entrails.
Air! The air of heaven! He stumbled towards the
window, groaning and almost fainting with sickness.
At the washstand a convulsion seized him within; and,
clasping his cold forehead wildly, he vomited profusely
in agony.
When the fit had spent itself he walked weakly to the
window and lifting the sash, sat in a comer of the
embrasure and leaned his elbow upon the sill. The
rain had drawn off ; and amid the moving vapours from
point to point of light the city was spinning about her-
self a soft cocoon of yellowish haze. Heaven was still
and faintly luminous and the air sweet to breathe, as
in a thicket drenched with showers: and amid peace
and shimmering lights and quiet fragrance he made a
covenant with his heart.
He prayed:
— He once had meant to come on earth in heavenly
glory but we sinned: and then He could not safely visit
[159]
us but with a shrouded majesty and a bedimmed radi-
ance for He was God, So He came Himself in weakness
not in power and He sent thee, a creature in His stead,
with a creature’s comeliness and lustre suited to our
state. And now thy very face and form, dear mother,
speak to us of the Eternal; not like earthly beauty, dan-
gerous to look upon, but like the morning star which is
thy emblem, bright and musical, breathing purity, tell-
ing of heaven and infusing peace, O harbinger of day!
O light of the pilgrim! Lead us still as thou hast led.
In the dark night, across the bleak wilderness guide us
on to our Lord Jesus, guide us home.—
His eyes were dimmed with tears and, looking humbly
up to heaven, he wept for the innocence he had lost.
When evening had fallen he left the house and the
first touch of the damp dark air and the noise of the
door as it closed behind him made ache again his con-
science, lulled by prayer and tears. Confess! Confess!
It was not enough to lull the conscience with a tear and
a prayer. He had to kneel before the minister of the
Holy Ghost and tell over his hidden sins truly and
repentantly. Before he heard again the footboard of
the housedoor trail over the threshold as it opened to
let him in, before he saw again the table in the kitchen
set for supper he would have knelt and confessed. It
was quite simple.
The ache of conscience ceased and he walked onward
swiftly through the dark streets. There were so many
flagstones on the footpath of that street and so many
streets in that city and so many cities in the world.
Yet eternity had no end. He was in mortal sin. Even
once was a mortal sin. It could happen in an instant.
[160]
But how so quickly? By seeing or by thinking of seeing.
The eyes see the thing, without having wished first to
see. Then in an instant it happens. But does that
part of the body understand or what? The serpent,
the most subtle beast of the field. It must understand
when it desires in one instant and then prolongs its own
desire instant after instant, sinfully. It feels and under-
stands and desires. What a horrible thing! Who made
it to be like that, a bestial part of the body able to
understand bestially and desire bestially? Was that
then he or an inhuman thing moved by a lower soul?
His soul sickened at the thought of a torpid snaky life
feeding itself out of the tender marrow of his life and
fattening upon the slime of lust. O why was that so?
O why?
He cowered in the shadow of the thought abasing
himself in the awe of God Who had made all things
and all men. Madness. Who could think such a
thought? And, cowering in darkness and abject, he
prayed mutely to his angel guardian to drive away with
his sword the demon that was whispering to his brain.
The whisper ceased and he knew then clearly that his
own soul had sinned in thought and word and deed
wilfully through his own body. Confess! He had to
confess every sin. How could he utter in words to the
priest what he had done? Must, must. Or how could
he explain without dying of shame? Or how could he
have done such things without shame? A madman!
Confess! O he would indeed to be free and sin-
less again! Perhaps the priest would know. O dear
God!
He walked on and on through ill-lit streets, fearing
to stand still for a moment lest it might seem that he
[161]
held back from what awaited him, fearing to arrive at
that towards which he still turned with longing. How
beautiful must be a soul in the state of grace when God
looked upon it with love!
Frowsy girls sat along the curbstones before their
baskets. Their dank hair hung trailed over their
brows. They were not beautiful to see as they crouched
in the mire. But their souls were seen by God; and if
their souls were in a state of grace they were radiant to
see: and God loved them, seeing them.
A wasting breath of humiliation blew bleakly over
his soul to think of how he had fallen, to feel that those
souls were dearer to God than his. The wind blew over
him and passed on to the myriads and myriads of other
souls, on whom God’s favour shone now more and now
less, stars now brighter and now dimmer, sustained and
failing. And the glimmering souls passed away, sus-
tained and failing, merged in a moving breath. One
soul was lost; a tiny soul: his. It flickered once and
went out, forgotten, lost. The end: black cold void
waste.
Consciousness of place came ebbing back to him
slowly over a vast tract of time unlit, unfelt, unlived.
The squalid scene composed itself around him; the
common accents, the burning gasjets in the shops,
odours of fish and spirits and wet sawdust, moving men
and women. An old woman was about to cross the
street, an oilcan in her hand. He bent down and asked
her was there a chapel near.
— A chapel, sir? Yes, sir. Church Street chapel.—
— Church? —
She shifted the can to her other hand and directed
him: and, as she held out her reeking withered right
[162]
hand under its fringe of shawl, he bent lower towards
her, saddened and soothed by her voice.
— Thank you.—
— You are quite welcome, sir.—
The candles on the high altar had been extinguished
but the fragrance of incense still floated down the dim
nave. Bearded workmen with pious faces were guiding
a canopy out through a side door, the sacristan aiding
them with quiet gestures and words. A few of the
faithful still lingered praying before one of the side-
altars or kneeling in the benches near the confessionals.
He approached timidly and knelt at the last bench in
the body, thankful for the peace and silence and fragrant
shadow of the church. The board on which he knelt
was narrow and worn and those who knelt near him
were humble followers of Jesus. Jesus too had been
born in poverty and had worked in the shop of a car-
penter, cutting boards and planing them, and had first
spoken of the kingdom of God to poor fishermen, teach-
ing all men to be meek and humble of heart.
He bowed his head upon his hands, bidding his heart
be meek and humble that he might be like those who
knelt beside him and his prayer as acceptable as theirs.
He prayed beside them but it was hard. His soul was
foul with sin and he dared not ask forgiveness with the
simple trust of those whom Jesus, in the mysterious
ways of God, had called first to His side, the carpenters,
the fishermen, poor and simple people following a lowly
trade, handling and shaping the wood of trees, mending
their nets with patience.
A tall figure came down the aisle and the penitents
stirred: and, at the last moment glancing up swiftly,
he saw a long grey beard and the brown habit of a
[163]
capuchin. The priest entered the box and was hidden.
Two penitents rose and entered the confessional at
either side. The wooden slide was drawn back and the
faint murmur of a voice troubled the silence.
His blood began to murmur in his veins, murmuring
like a sinful city summoned from its sleep to bear its
doom. Little flakes of fire fell and powdery ashes fell
softly, alighting on the houses of men. They stirred,
waking from sleep, troubled by the heated air.
The slide was shot back. The penitent emerged from
the side of the box. The farther side was drawn. A
woman entered quietly and deftly where the first peni-
tent had knelt. The faint murmur began again.
He could still leave the chapel. He could stand up,
put one foot before the other and walk out softly and
then run, run, run swiftly through the dark streets.
He could still escape from the shame. Had it been any
terrible crime but that one sin! Had it been murder!
Little fiery flakes fell and touched him at all points,
shameful thoughts, shameful words, shameful acts.
Shame covered him wholly like fine glowing ashes fall-
ing continually. To say it in words! His soul, stifling
and helpless, would cease to be.
The slide was shot back. A penitent emerged from
the farther side of the box. The near slide was drawn.
A penitent entered where the other penitent had come
out. A soft whispering noise floated in vaporous cloud-
lets out of the box. It was the woman: soft whispering
cloudlets, soft whispering vapour, whispering and vanish-
ing.
He beat his breast with his fist humbly, secretly under
cover of the wooden armrest. He would be at one with
others and with God. He would love his neighbour.
[164]
He would love God Who had made and loved him. He
would kneel and pray with others and be happy. God
would look down on him and on them and would love
them all.
It was easy to be good. God’s yoke was sweet and
light. It was better never to have sinned, to have re-
mained always a child, for God loved little children and
suffered them to come to Him. It was a terrible and
a sad thing to sin. But God was merciful to poor
sinners who were truly sorry. How true that was!
That was indeed goodness.
The slide was shot to suddenly. The penitent came
out. He was next. He stood up in terror and walked
blindly into the box.
At last it had come. He knelt in the silent gloom
and raised his eyes to the white crucifix suspended above
him. God could see that he was sorry. He would tell
all his sins. His confession would be long, long.
Everybody in the chapel would know then what a sinner
he had been. Let them know. It was true. But God
had promised to forgive him if he was sorry. He was
sorry. He clasped his hands and raised them towards
the white form, praying with his darkened eyes, praying
with all his trembling body, swaying his head to and
fro like a lost creature, praying with whimpering lips.
— Sorry! Sorry! O sorry! —
The slide clicked back and his heart bounded in his
breast. The face of an old priest was at the grating,
averted from him, leaning upon a hand. He made the
sign of the cross and prayed of the priest to bless him
for he had sinned. Then, bowing his head, he repeated
the Confiteor in fright. At the words my most grievous
fault he ceased, breathless.
[165]
— How long is it since your last confession, my
child? —
— A long time, father.—
— A month, my child? —
— Longer, father.—
— Three months, my child? —
— Longer, father.—
— Six months? —
— Eight months, father.—
He had begun. The priest asked:
— And what do you remember since that time? —
He began to confess his sins: masses missed, prayers
not said, lies.
— Anything else, my child? —
Sins of anger, envy of others, gluttony, vanity, disobedience.
— Anything else, my child? —
There was no help. He murmured:
— I . . . committed sins of impurity, father.—
T
he priest did not turn his head.
— With yourself, my child? —
— And . . . with others.—
— With women, my child ? —
— Yes, father.—
— Were they married women, my child? —
He did not know. His sins trickled from his lips, one
by one, trickled in shameful drops from his soul fester-
ing and oozing like a sore, a squalid stream of vice.
The last sins oozed forth, sluggish, filthy. There was no
more to tell. He bowed his head, overcome.
The priest was silent. Then he asked:
— How old are you, my child? —
— Sixteen, father.
[166]
The priest passed his hand several times over his face.
Then, resting his forehead against his hand, he leaned
towards the grating and, with eyes still averted, spoke
slowly. His voice was weary and old.
— You are very young, my child — he said, — and let
me implore of you to give up that sin. It is a terrible
sin. It kills the body and it kills the soul. It is the
cause of many crimes and misfortunes. Give it up, my
child, for God’s sake. It is dishonourable and unmanly.
You cannot know where that wretched habit will lead
you or where it will come against you. As long as you
commit that sin, my poor child, you will never be worth
one farthing to God. Pray to our mother Mary to help
you. She will help you, my child. Pray to Our Blessed
Lady when that sin comes into your mind. I am sure
you will do that, will you not? You repent of all those
sins. I am sure you do. And you will promise God
now that by His holy grace you will never offend Him
any more by that wicked sin. You will make that
solemn promise to God, will you not? —
— Yes, father.—
The old and weary voice fell like sweet rain upon his
quaking parching heart. How sweet and sad!
— Do so, my poor child. The devil has led you astray.
Drive him back to hell when he tempts you to dishonour
your body in that way — the foul spirit who hates Our
Lord. Promise God now that you will give up that sin,
that wretched wretched sin.—
Blinded by his tears and by the light of God’s merci-
fulness he bent his head and heard the grave words of
absolution spoken and saw the priest’s hand raised above
him in token of forgiveness.
— God bless you, my child. Pray for me.—
[167]
He knelt to say his penance, praying in a corner of
the dark nave: and his prayers ascended to heaven from
his purified heart like perfume streaming upwards from
a heart of white rose.
The muddy streets were gay. He strode homeward,
conscious of an invisible grace pervading and making
light his limbs. In spite of all he had done it. He had
confessed and God had pardoned him. His soul was
made fair and holy once more, holy and happy.
It would be beautiful to die if God so willed. It was
beautiful to live in grace a life of peace and virtue and
forbearance with others.
He sat by the fire in the kitchen, not daring to speak
for happiness. Till that moment he had not known
how beautiful and peaceful life could be. The green
square of paper pinned round the lamp cast down a
tender shade. On the dresser was a plate of sausages
and white pudding and on the shelf there were eggs.
They would be for the breakfast in the morning after
the communion in the college chapel. White pudding
and eggs and sausages and cups of tea. How simple and
beautiful was life after all! And life lay all before him.
In a dream he fell asleep. In a dream he rose and
saw that it was morning. In a waking dream he went
through the quiet morning towards the college.
The boys were all there, kneeling in their places. He
knelt among them, happy and shy. The altar was
heaped with fragrant masses of white flowers: and in
the morning light the pale flames of the candles among
the white flowers were clear and silent as his own soul.
He knelt before the altar with his classmates, holding
the altar cloth with them over a living rail of hands.
His hands were trembling and his soul trembled as he
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heard the priest pass with the ciborium from communi-
cant to communicant.
— Corpus Domini nostri.—
Could it be? He knelt there sinless and timid: and he
would hold upon his tongue the host and God would
enter his purified body.
— In vitam eternam. Amen.—
Another life! A life of grace and virtue and happi-
ness! It was true. It was not a dream from which he
would wake. The past was past.
— Corpus Domini nostri.—
The ciborium had come to him.
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Chapter IV.