It seemed to him that all eyes saw just what was boiling within
him,--that the wild thoughts that seemed to scream their turbulent
importunities in his ears were speaking so loud that all the world would
hear. He should disgrace himself before the brethren whom he had so
long been striving to bring to order and to teach the lessons of holy
self-control. He saw himself pointed at, hissed at, degraded, by the
very men who had quailed before his own reproofs; and scarcely, when he
had bolted the door behind him, did he feel himself safe. Panting and
breathless, he fell on his knees before the crucifix, and, bowing his
head in his hands, fell forward upon the floor. As a spent wave melts at
the foot of a rock, so all his strength passed away, and he lay awhile
in a kind of insensibility,--a state in which, though consciously
existing, he had no further control over his thoughts and feelings. In
that state of dreamy exhaustion his mind seemed like a mirror, which,
without vitality or will of its own, simply lies still and reflects the
objects that may pass over it. As clouds sailing in the heavens cast
their images, one after another, on the glassy floor of a waveless sea,
so the scenes of his former life drifted in vivid pictures athwart his
memory.
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