Page 54 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

a monstrance to run away with and sell it somewhere. That
must have been a terrible sin, to go in there quietly at night,
to open the dark press and steal the flashing gold thing into
which God was put on the altar in the middle of flowers and
candles at benediction while the incense went up in clouds
at both sides as the fellow swung the censer and Dominic
Kelly sang the first part by himself in the choir. But God was
not in it of course when they stole it. But still it was a strange
and a great sin even to touch it. He thought of it with deep
awe; a terrible and strange sin: it thrilled him to think of it
in the silence when the pens scraped lightly. But to drink
the altar wine out of the press and be found out by the smell
was a sin too: but it was not terrible and strange. It only
made you feel a little sickish on account of the smell of the
wine. Because on the day when he had made his first holy
communion in the chapel he had shut his eyes and opened
his mouth and put out his tongue a little: and when the rec-
tor had stooped down to give him the holy communion he
had smelt a faint winy smell off the rector’s breath after the
wine of the mass. The word was beautiful: wine. It made
you think of dark purple because the grapes were dark pur-
ple that grew in Greece outside houses like white temples.
But the faint smell of the rector’s breath had made him feel
a sick feeling on the morning of his first communion. The
day of your first communion was the happiest day of your
life. And once a lot of generals had asked Napoleon what
was the happiest day of his life. They thought he would say
the day he won some great battle or the day he was made an
emperor. But he said:

54 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man