Note 13 — Chapter XXII · THE LAST HEIGHTS1 (1910–1915)

One day, when two professors of the Grand-Séminaire de Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux13 had come to see him, as the time drew near to bid them good-bye, the old man held out his hands and tucked them under their arms, and, not without difficulty, rose from his arm-chair, and arm-in-arm with them advanced, tile by tile, to the threshold of the house, whither he had determined to accompany them. Suddenly, pressing their arms more closely and alluding to their cassocks and their vocation, he said, energetically: “You have chosen the better part”; and, holding them back for a last word, he added: “Life is a horrible phantasmagoria. But it leads us to a better future.”