…cherished the dream of retiring from the world, of living peacefully as a recluse near to God.

He had, to be sure, only thought of it definitely in the form of impossible longings and regrets, for he knew full well that neither was his body strong enough nor his soul staunch enough for him to bury himself as a Trappist. Still, once started from that spring-board, his imagination flew off at a tangent, over-leaped every obstacle, floated in discursive reveries where he saw himself as a Friar in some easy-going convent under the rule of a merciful Order, devoted to liturgies and adoring art.

He could but shrug his shoulders, indeed, when he came back to himself, and smile at these dreams of the future which he indulged in hours of vacuous idleness; but this self-contempt of a man who catches himself in the very act of flagrant nonsense was nevertheless succeeded by the hope of not losing all the advantages of an honest delusion; and he could remount on a chimera which he thought less wild, as leading to a via media, a compromise, fancying that by moderating his ideal he should find it more attainable.

‘The Cathedral’ by J.K. Huysmans