ertain 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 from a supernat