From grosser passions, whose roots lie in the senses, there is always a
refuge in man's loftier nature. He can cast them aside with contempt,
and leave them as one whose lower story is flooded can remove to a
higher loft, and live serenely with a purer air and wider prospect. But
to love that is born of ideality, of intellectual sympathy, of harmonies
of the spiritual and Immortal nature, of the very poetry and purity of
the soul, if it be placed where reason and religion forbid its exercise
and expression, what refuge but the grave,--what hope but that wide
eternity where all human barriers fall, all human relations end, and
love ceases to be a crime? A man of the world may struggle by change of
scene, place, and employment. He may put oceans between himself and the
things that speak of what he desires to forget. He may fill the void in
his life with the stirring excitement of the battlefield, or the whirl
of travel from city to city, or the press of business and care. But what
help is there for him whose life is tied down to the narrow sphere of
the convent,--to the monotony of a bare cell, to the endless repetition
of the same prayers, the same chants, the same prostrations, especially
when all that ever redeemed it from monotony has been that image and
that sympathy which conscience now bids him forget?

When Father Francesco precipitated himself into his cell and locked
the door, it was with the desperation of a man who flies from a mortal
enemy. It seemed to him that all eyes saw just what was boiling within
him,--that the wild thoughts that seemed to scream their turbulent
importunities in his ears were speaking so loud that all the world would
hear. He should disgrace himself before the brethren whom he had so
long been striving to bring to order and to teach the lessons of holy
self-control. He saw himself pointed at, hissed at, degraded, by the
very men who had quailed before his own reproofs; and scarcely, when he
had bolted the door behind him, did he feel himself safe. Panting and