Moreover, at this minute which we are now traversing⁠—a minute which will not, fortunately, leave its impress on the nineteenth century⁠—at this hour, when so many men have low brows and souls but little elevated, among so many mortals whose morality consists in enjoyment, and who are busied with the brief and misshapen things of matter, whoever exiles himself seems worthy of veneration to us.

The monastery is a renunciation. Sacrifice wrongly directed is still sacrifice. To mistake a grave error for a duty has a grandeur of its own.

Taken by itself, and ideally, and in order to examine the truth on all sides until all aspects have been impartially exhausted, the monastery, the female convent in particular⁠—for in our century it is woman who suffers the most, and in this exile of the cloister there is something of protestation⁠—the female convent has incontestably a certain majesty.