was to my sister, one to
Madame de Marillac, and the third to M. Couste. I should have liked to
show them to you, but Father Chavigny offered to take charge of them,
and as he had approved of them, I could not venture to suggest any
doubts. After the letters were written, we had some conversation and
prayer; but when the father took up his breviary and I my rosary with
the same intention, I felt so weary that I asked if I might lie on my
bed; he said I might, and I had two good hours' sleep without dreams
or any sort of uneasiness; when I woke we prayed together, and had just
finished when you came back."

"Well, madame," said the doctor, "if you will, we can pray again; kneel
down, and let us say the 'Veni Sancte Spiritus'."

She obeyed, and said the prayer with much unction and piety. The prayer
finished, M. Pirot was about to take up the pen to go on with the
confession, when she said, "Pray let me submit to you one question which
is troubling me. Yesterday you gave me great hope of the mercy of God;
but I cannot presume to hope I shall be saved without spending a long
time in purgatory; my crime is far too atrocious to be pardoned on any
other conditions; and when I have attained to a love of God far greater
than I can feel here, I should not expect to be saved before my stains
have been purified by fire, without suffering the penalty that my sins
have deserved. But I have been told that the flames of purgatory where
souls are burned for a time are just the same as the flames of hell
where those who are damned burn through all eternity tell me, then, how
can a soul awaking in purgatory at the moment of separation from this
body be sure that she is not really in hell? how can she know that
the flames that burn her and consume not will some day cease? For the
torment she suffers is like that of the damned, and the flames wherewith
she is burned are even as the flames of hell. This I would fain know,
that at this awful moment I may feel no doubt, that I may know for
certain whether I dare hope or must despair."

"Madame," replied the doctor, "you are right, and God is too just to add
the horror of uncertainty to His rightful punishments. At that moment
when the soul quits her earthly body the judgment of God is passed upon
her: she hears the sentence of pardon or of doom; she knows whether she
is in the state of grace or of mortal sin; she sees whether she is to be
plunged forever into hell, or if God sends her for a