The Cure Martel had been born in Paris, and there
he had lived during all his childhood, and there he had
made his clerical studies. There also he had passed
through the most vital days, the most poignant days
of his budding manhood, when desiring to serve — first
God, then the flesh, but finally God, he had thrust
away all thoughts of a home and a wife and children.
But as sometimes happens, an old battlefield upon
which men have bled and striven and suffered will
hold for them a certain romance, and so it was with
the Cure and Paris; he could seldom remember the
city without feeling regret for those days of his youth-
ful warfare.
He would never have chosen to work for the Lord in
a small seaport town on the coast of Provence; indeed,
when he thought of the matter at all, he would find
himself wondering, how he had got there. Had it
been his desire for solitude at a time when he was
spiritually and physically .exhausted? Or had some
unknown ill-wisher in the Church contrived to get
him sent into exile? Or had it been the purpose of
Almighty God, which could only be seen as through a
glass darkly? If the Cure found himself unable to
decide, it was because he invariably left an important
factor out of his reckoning; he forgot that he was above
all else a student, and that those who dwell too much
in the realms of thought are sometimes but poorly
equipped for action. Thus, despite the more valiant
days of his youth; his war with the flesh and his
ultimate triumph; his brilliant career at the seminary;
his good birth, and his then distinguished appearance,
Mother Church — who had gained a sound knowledge
of men in the bitter but useful school of disillusion —
had quietly packed him off to Saint Loup, where he
had now been for close on thirty years, and where he
seemed likely enough to remain until he presented
himself to Saint Peter.
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