And who knows if, even among those few privileged ones, some are not driven by the demon of vanity to increase the asceticism of their lives, thinking of the glory of being on an altar! The priest who succeeds in subduing his flesh falls into avarice, which is the ecclesiastical vice _par excellence_.

I have never hoarded from vice; I have saved for my own, but never for myself." The prelate was silent for a long while; but in his irresistible desire to confide in the simple old woman he went on.
"I am sure that God will not despise me when my hour comes.

His infinite mercy is above all the littleness of life.

What has been my fault?
To have loved a woman, as my father loved my mother; to have had children as the apostles and saints had.

And why not?
Ecclesiastical celibacy is an invention of men, a detail of discipline agreed upon at the councils; but the flesh and its exigencies are anterior by many centuries; they date from Paradise.