society, a
certain deportment. I think that a person called like you to live in
Austria and in Italy should be a Catholic. However, it is necessary to
remember that you might marry some one of another faith. Do not object. I
am your father. I can foresee all. I know you will marry only according
to the dictates of your heart. Wait then until it has spoken, to settle
the question.... If you love a Catholic, you will then have occasion to
pay a compliment to your betrothed by adopting his faith, of which he
will be very sensible.... From now until then, I shall not prevent you
from following ceremonies which please you. Those of the Roman liturgy
are, assuredly, among the best; I myself attended Saint Peter's at the
time of the pontifical government.... The taste, the magnificence, the
music, all moved me.... But to take a definite, irreparable step, I
repeat, you must wait. Your actual condition of a Protestant has the
grand sentiment of being more neutral, less defined."

What words to listen to by a heart already touched by the attraction of
'grace and by the nostalgia of eternal life! But the heart was that of a
young girl very pure and very tender. To judge her father was to her
impossible, and the Baron's firmness had convinced her that she must obey
his wishes and pray that he be enlightened. She therefore waited, hoping,
sustained and directed meanwhile by Cardinal Guerillot, who later on was
to baptize her and to obtain for her the favor of approaching the holy
table for the first time at the Pope's mass. That prelate, one of the
noblest figures of which the French bishopric has had cause to be proud,
since Monseigneur Pie, was one of those grand Christians for whom the
hand of God is as visible in the direction of human beings as it is
invisible to doubtful souls. When Fanny, already devoted to her
charities, confided in him the serious troubles of her mind and the
discord which had arisen between her and her father on the so essential
point of her baptism, the Cardinal replied:

"Have faith in God. He will give you a sign when your time has come." And
he uttered those words with an accent whose conviction had filled the
young girl with a certainty which had never left her.

In spite of his seventy years, and of the experiences of the confession,
in spite of the disenchanting struggle with the freemasonry of his French
diocese, which had caused his exile to Rome, the venerable man looked at
Fanny's marriage fr