irreparable, and the next thing I knew I was lying alone in my room. I didn't have the 
dogs in bed with me as always in winter because the dogs were dead, and though there was 
no fire lighted, I climbed, filthy and bloody, under the bed covers and went into deep 
sleep.
  
  For days I stayed in my room.
  
  I knew the villagers had gone up the mountain, found the wolves, and brought them back 
down to the castle, because Augustin came and told me these things, but I didn't answer.
  
  Maybe a week passed. When I could stand having other dogs near me, I went down to my 
kennel and brought up two pups, already big animals, and they kept me company. At night I 
slept between them.
  
  The servants came and went. But no one bothered me.
  
  And then my mother came quietly and almost stealthily into the room.
  
       2     
  
  It was evening. I was sitting on the bed, with one of the dogs stretched out beside me 
and the other stretched out under my knees. The fire was roaring.
  
  And there was my mother coming at last, as I supposed I should have expected.
  
  I knew her by her particular movement in the shadows, and whereas if anyone else had 
come near me I would have shouted "Go away," I said nothing at all to her.
  
  I had a great and unshakable love of her. I don't think anyone else did. And one thing 
that endeared her to me always was that she never said anything ordinary.
  
   "Shut the door," "Eat your soup," "Sit still," things like that never passed her lips. 
She read all the time; in fact, she was the only one in our family who had any education, 
and when she did speak it was really to speak. So I wasn't resentful of her now.
  
  On the contrary she aroused my curiosity. What would she say, and would it conceivably 
make a difference to me? I had not wanted her to come, nor even thought of her, and I 
didn't turn away from the fire to look at her.
  
  But there was a powerful understanding between us. When I had tried to escape this 
house and been brought back, it was she who had shown me the way out of the pain that 
followed. Miracles she'd worked for me, though no one around us had ever noticed.
  
  Her first intervention had come when I was twelve, and the old parish priest, who had 
taught me some poetry by rote and to read an anthem or two in Latin, wanted to send me to 
school at the nearby monastery.
  
  My father said no, that I could learn all I needed in my own house. But it was my 
mother who roused herself from her books to do loud and vociferous battle with him. I 
would go, she said, if I wanted to. And she sold one of her jewels to pay for my books 
and clothing. Her jewels had all come down to her from an Italian grandmother and each 
had its story, and this was a hard thing for her to do. But she did it immediately.
  
  My father was angry and reminded her that if this had happened before he went blind, 
his will would have prevailed surely. My brothers assured him that his youngest son 
wouldn't be gone long. I'd come running home as soon as I was made to do something I 
didn't want to do.
  
  Well, I didn't come running home. I loved the monastery school.
  
  I loved the chapel and the hymns, the library with its thousands of old books, the 
bells that divided the day, the ever repeated rituals. I loved the cleanliness of the 
place, the overwhelming fact that all things here were well kept and in good repair, that 
work never ceased throughout the great house and the gardens.
  
  When I was corrected, which wasn't often, I knew an intense happiness because someone 
for the first time in my life was trying to make me into a good person, one who could 
learn things.
  
  Within a month I declared my vocation. I wanted to enter the order. I wanted to spend 
my life in those immaculate cloisters, in the library writing on parchment and learning 
to read the ancient books. I wanted to be enclosed forever with people who believed I 
could be good if I wanted to be.
  
  I was liked there. And that was a most unusual thing. I didn't make other people there 
unhappy or angry.
  
  The Father Superior wrote immediately to ask my father's permission. And frankly I 
thought my father would be glad to be rid of me.
  
  But three days later my brothers arrived to take me home with them. I cried and begged 
to stay, but there was nothing the Father Superior could do.
  
  And as soon as we reached the castle, my brothers took away my books and locked me up. 
I didn't understand why they were so angry. There was the hint that I had behaved like a 
fool for some reason. I couldn't stop crying. I was walking round and round and smashing 
my fist into things and kicking the door.
  
  Then my brother Augustin started coming in and talking to me. He'd circle the point at 
first, but what came clear finally was that no member of a great French family was going 
to be a poor teaching brother. How could I have misunderstood everything so completely? I 
was sent there to learn to read and write. Why did I always have to go to extremes? Why 
did I behave habitually like a wild creature?
  
  As for becoming a priest with real prospects within the Church, well, I was the 
youngest son of this family, now, wasn't I? I ought to think of my duties to my nieces 
and nephews.
  
  Translate all that to mean this: We have no money to launch a real ecclesiastical 
career for you, to make you a bishop or cardinal as befits our rank, so you have to live