her eyes, that
Durtal stood looking at her, admiring the honesty and purity of a soul
which could thus rise to the threshold of her eyes and come forth in her
look.

"How happy you are!" he exclaimed.

A cloud dimmed her eyes, and she looked down.

"Envy no one, our friend," said she, "for each has his own struggles and
griefs."

And when he had parted from her, Durtal, as he went home, thought of the
disasters she had confessed, the cessation of her intercourse with
Heaven, the fall of a soul that had been wont to soar above the clouds.
How she must suffer!

"No, no," he said, "the service of the Lord is not all roses. If we
study the lives of the Saints we see these Elect tormented by dreadful
maladies, and the most painful trials. No, holiness on earth is no
child's play, life is not amusement. To Saints, indeed, even on earth
excessive suffering finds compensation in excessive joys; but to other
Christians, such small fry as we are, what distress and trouble! We
question the everlasting silence and none answers; we wait and none
comes. In vain do we proclaim Him as Illimitable, Incomprehensible,
Unthinkable, and confess that every effort of our reason is vain, we
cannot cease to wonder, and still less cease to suffer! And yet--and yet
if we consider, the darkness about us is not absolutely impenetrable,
there is light in places and we can discern some truths, such as this:

"God treats us as He treats plants. He is, in a certain sense, the
soul's year; but a year in which the order of the seasons is reversed;
for the spiritual seasons begin with spring, followed by winter, and
then autumn comes, followed by summer.

"The moment of conversion is the spring, the soul is joyful and Christ
sows the good seed; then comes the cold and all is dark, the
terror-stricken soul believes itself forsaken and bewails itself; but
without its feeling it during the trials of the purgatorial life, the
seed germinates in the contemplative peace of autumn and flourishes in
the summer life of Union.

"Aye; but each one must be the helping gardener of his own soul,
listening to the instructions of the Master who plans the task and
directs the work. Alas, we are no more the humble labourers of the
Middle Ages, who toiled, giving God thanks, who submitted without
discussion to the Master's orders. We, by our little faith, have
exhausted the value of prayer, the panacea of aspirations; consequently
many things seem to us unjust an