And my career has been so bleak that, although it ended in deeper
sadness than I had known before, I look back to the episode with
gratitude. The bank of clouds which shut out this sole light of my life
quickened its brilliancy before they submerged it.
After the terrible siege of '71, when the last German was gone, and our
houses had breasted the ordeal of the Commune, I was sent to the South.
The Superior thought my cheeks were ominously hollow, and suspected
threats of consumption in my cough. So I was to go to the Mediterranean,
and try its milder air. I liked the change. Paris, with its gloss of
noisy gayety and its substance of sceptical heartlessness, was repugnant
to me. Perhaps it was because of this that Brother Sebastian had been
mured up in the capital two thirds of his life. If our surroundings are
too congenial we neglect the work set before us. But no matter; to the
coast I went.
My new home was a long-established house, spacious, venerable, and
dreary. It was on the outskirts of an ancient town, which was of far
more importance before our Lord was born than it has ever been since. We
had little to do. There were nine brothers, a handful of resident
orphans, and some three-score pupils. Ragged, stupid, big-eyed urchins
they were, altogether different from the keen Paris boys. For that
matter, every feature of my new home was odd.
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