Would life yet allow him to enter its fold?
Had he not been branded with a mark which for ever condemned him to dwell apart?
He thought he could feel his priestly vows burning his very flesh like red-hot iron.

What use would it be for him to dress as men dress, if in reality he was never to be a man?
He had hitherto lived in such a quivering state, in a sphere of renunciation and dreams! To know manhood never, to be too late for it, that thought filled him with terror.

And when at last he made up his mind to fling aside his cassock, he did so from a simple sense of rectitude, for all his anguish remained.
When he returned to Montmartre on the following day, he wore a jacket and trousers of a dark colour.

Neither an exclamation nor a glance that might have embarrassed him came from Mere-Grand or the three young men.

Was not the change a natural one?
They greeted him therefore in the quiet way that was usual with them; perhaps, with some increase of affection, as if to set him the more at his ease.