Clarimonde

Brother, you ask me if I have ever loved. Yes. My story is a strange and
terrible one; and though I am sixty-six years of age,

I scarcely dare
even now to disturb the ashes of that memory. To you I can refuse
nothing; but I should not relate such a tale to any less experienced
mind. So strange were the circumstances of my story, that I can scarcely
believe myself to have ever actually been a party to them. For more
than three years I remained the victim of a most singular and diabolical
illusion. Poor country priest though I was, I led every night in a
dream--would to God it had been all a dream!--a most worldly life, a
damning life, a life of Sardanapalus. One single look too freely cast
upon a woman well-nigh caused me to lose my soul; but finally by the
grace of God and the assistance of my patron saint, I succeeded in
casting out the evil spirit that possessed me. My daily life was long
interwoven with a nocturnal life of a totally different character. By
day I was a priest of Lord, occupied with prayer and sacred things;
from the instant that I closed my eyes I became a young
nobleman, a fine connoisseur in women, dogs, and horses; gambling,
drinking, and blaspheming; and when I awoke at early daybreak, it seemed
to me, on the other hand, that I had been sleeping, and had only dreamed
that I was a priest. Of this somnambulistic life there now remains to me
only the recollection of certain scenes and words which I cannot banish
from my memory; but although I never actually left walls of my
presbytery, one would think to hear me speak that I were a man who,
of all worldly pleasures, had become a religious, seeking to end a
tempestuous life in the service of God, rather than a humble seminarist
who has grown old in this obscure curacy, situated in the depths of the
woods and even isolated from the life of the century.
Yes, I have loved as none in world ever loved--with an insensate
and furious passion--so violent that I am astonished it did not cause my
heart to burst asunder. Ah, what nights--what nights!
From my earliest childhood I had felt a vocation to the priesthood, so
that all my studies were directed with that idea in view. Up to the
age of twenty-four my life had been only a prolonged novitiate. Having
completed my course of theology I successively received all minor
orders, and my superiors judged me worthy, despite my youth, to pass the
last awful degree. My ordination was fixed for Easter week.
never gone into