Please, we did not understand it either. Rather we did, but wrongly, on the novitiate plane.

Again and again the penitent in his ‘novitiate’ succumbs to obscurely-indicated ‘temptations’:

Even though others had been breaking ground, I had a longer backward reach. After all, I had had a quarter of a century novitiate.

Down and Out in Paris and London, “A Hanging,” “Shooting an Elephant,” The Road to Wigan Pier, and finally Homage to Catalonia, which ends his novitiate.