CHAPTER xv

IT was during the long preparation for Communion
upon which the Cure always insisted — those
months of endless religious instruction which, in spite
of his habitual indolence, he felt it his duty to give
the children — that Christophe began to study the
gospels with a new and curiously personal interest
Far into the night he would read and reread their
simple yet poignantly tragic story; and the while he
read he would grow aware of an uneasy feeling of
apprehension, illogical, strange, and until now un-
known. He would think:
'Why should I be feeling afraid? It all happened
a very long time ago . . . and besides, Christ was
God.5 He would cling to this thought, so familiar
and in consequence so reassuring.
But another strange thing would bewilder the boy:
he would want to find something that was not in
the gospels. His mind would grope about helplessly
trying to understand its conviction that a link had
been lost, a link with the divine, and that thus what
remained was less than perfection.
cSuch thoughts are great blasphemy,' he would
decide; CI had better confess at once to the Cure.
It may easily be the devil who tempts because I
shall soon make my First Communion/
But he neither confessed nor spoke of those thoughts,
for just lately he had grown very shy and self-con-
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