Yes, knowledge meant everything to me. It was like a sister, and a sister was enough for me. It’s not that other ideas did not come to me with age. More than once my flesh was excited by a woman’s form passing by. That force of sex and blood in the grown man which, as a foolish youth I thought I had stifled for life, had more than once convulsively shaken the iron chain of vows binding me, poor wretch, to the cold stones of the altar. But fasting, prayer, study, the mortifications of the cloister, had restored to the spirit mastery over the flesh. Anyhow, I avoided women. Besides, I had only
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