CHAPTER II.
Durtal had already been living at Chartres for three months.
On his return to Paris from La Trappe he had fallen into a fearful state of spiritual anemia.

His soul kept its room, rarely rose, lounged on a couch, was torpid with the tepid langour still lulled by the sleepy mutter of mere lip-service, and prayers reeled off as by a worn-out machine of which the spring releases itself, so that it works all alone with no result, and without a touch to start it.
Sometimes, however, in a rebellious mood he managed to check himself, to stop the ill-regulated clockwork of his prayers, and then he would try to examine himself, to get above himself, and to see in a comprehensive glance the puzzling perspective of his nature.
And facing these chambers of the soul, dim with mist, he was struck by a strange association of the Revelations of Saint Theresa and a tale by Edgar Poe.
Those chambers of the inner man were empty and cold, and like the halls of the House of Usher, surrounded by a moat whence the fog rose, forcing its way in at last and cracking the worn shell of wall.

Alone and uneasy, he prowled about the ruined cells, with closed doors that refused ever to open again; thus his walks about his own mind were very limited, and the panorama he could see was strangely narrowed, shrunk close and near to him, almost nothing.

And he knew full well that the ruins surrounding the central cell, the Master's Room, were bolted and fastened with rivets that could not be unscrewed, and triple bars--inaccessible.

So he restricted himself to wandering in the halls and passages.
At Notre Dame de l'Atre he had ventured further; he had gone into the enclosure round about the abode of Christ; he had seen in the distance the frontiers of Mysticism, and, too weak to go on his road, he had fallen; and now this was to be lamented, for, as Saint Theresa truly remarks, "in the spiritual life, if we do not go forward, we go back." He had, in fact, retraced his steps, and lay half paralyzed, no longer even in the vestibule of his mansion, but in the outer court.
Till this time the phenomena described by the matchless Abbess had been exactly repeated.