All's well that ends well,
and as my existence has, upon the whole, been a pleasant one, I often
amuse myself, like Marcus Aurelius, by calculating how much I owe to
the various influences which have traversed my life, and woven the
tissue of it. In these calculations, St. Sulpice always comes out
as the principal factor. I can venture to speak very freely on this
point, for little of the credit is due to me. I was well trained, and
that is the secret of the whole matter. My amiability, which is in
many cases the result of indifference; my indulgency, which is sincere
enough, and is due to the fact that I see clearly how unjust men
are to one another; my conscientious habits, which afford me real
pleasure, and my infinite capacity for enduring ennui, attributable
perhaps to my having been so well inoculated by ennui during my youth
that it has never taken since, are all to be explained by the circle
in which I lived, and the profound impressions which I received. Since
I left St. Sulpice, I have been constantly losing ground, and yet,
with only a quarter the virtues of a St. Sulpice man, I have, I think,
been far above the average.
I should like to explain in detail and show how the paradoxical
resolve to hold fast to the clerical virtues, without the faith upon
which they are based, and in a world for which they are not designed,
produced so far as I was concerned, the most amusing encounters. I
should like to relate all the adventures which my Sulpician habits
brought about, and the singular tricks which they played me.
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