om a supernatural standpoint. Many priests are thus
capable of a naivete which, on careful analysis, is often in the right.
But at the moment the antithesis between the authentic reality and that
which they believe, constitutes an irony almost absurd. When he had
baptized Fanny, the old Bishop of Clermont was possessed by a joy so deep
that he said to her, to express to her the more delicately the tender
respect of his friendship:

"I can now say as did Saint Monica after the baptism of Saint Augustine:
'Cur hic sim, nescio; jam consumpta spe hujus saeculi'. I do not know why
I remain here below. All my hope of the age is consummated. And like her
I can add--the only thing which made me desire to remain awhile was to
see you a Catholic before dying. The traveller, who has tarried, has now
nothing to do but to go. He has gathered the last and the prettiest
flower."....

Noble and faithful apostle, who was indeed to go so shortly after,
meriting what they said of him, that which the African bishop said of his
mother: "That religious soul was at length absolved from her body."....
He did not anticipate that he would pay dearly for that realization of
his last wish! He did not foresee that she whom he ingenuously termed his
most beautiful flower was to become to him the principal cause of bitter
sorrow. Poor, grand Cardinal! It was the final trial of his life, the
supremely bitter drop in his chalice, to assist at the disenchantment
which followed so closely upon the blissful intoxication of his gentle
neophyte's first initiation. To whom, if not to him, should she have gone
to ask counsel, in all the tormenting doubts which she at once began to
have in her feelings with regard to her fiance?

It was, therefore, that on the day following the evening on which
imprudent Ardea had jested so persistently upon a subject sacred to her
that she rang at the door of the apartment which Monseigneur Guerillot
occupied in the large mansion on Rue des Quatre-Fontaines. There was no
question of incriminating the spirit of those pleasantries, nor of
relating her humiliating observations on the Prince's intoxication. No.
She wished to ease her mind, on which rested a shade of sorrow. At the
time of her betrothal, she had fancied she loved Ardea, for the emotion
of her religious life at length freed had inspired her with gratitude for
him who was, however, only the pretext of that exemption. She trembled
to-day, not only at not loving him