consecration of Amelie
de Repentigny will be to us the marriage at Cana. Our water will be
turned into wine. I shall no longer need to save the crumbs, except for
the poor at our gate."

The advent of Amelie de Repentigny was a circumstance of absorbing
interest to the nuns, who regarded it as a reward for their long
devotions and prayers for the restoration of their house to its old
prosperity. We usually count Providence upon our side when we have
consciously done aught to merit the good fortune that befalls us.

And now days came and went, went and came, as Time, the inexorable, ever
does, regardless of human joys or sorrows. Amelie, weary of the world,
was only desirous of passing away from it to that sphere where time is
not, and where our affections and thoughts alone measure the periods of
eternity. For time, there, is but the shadow that accompanies the joys
of angels, or the woes of sinners,--not the reality. It is time here,
eternity there!

The two postulantes seemed impressed with the spirit that, to their
fancies, lingered in the cell of their kinswoman, Mere Madelaine. They
bent their gentle necks to the heaviest yoke of spiritual service which
their Superior would consent to lay upon them.

Amelie's inflexible will made her merciless towards herself. She took
pleasure in the hardest of self-imposed penances, as if the racking of
her soul by incessant prayers, and wasting of her body by vigils and
cruel fastings, were a vicarious punishment, borne for the sake of her
hapless brother.

She could not forget Pierre, nor did she ever try to forget him. It
was observed by the younger nuns that when, by chance or design, they
mentioned his name, she looked up and her lips moved in silent prayer;
but she spoke not of him, save to her aunt and to Heloise. These two
faithful friends alone knew the inexpressible anguish with which she had
heard of Pierre's intended departure for France.

The shock caused by the homicide of the Bourgeois, and the consequent
annihilation of all the hopes of her life in a happy union with Pierre
Philibert, was too much for even her naturally sound and elastic
constitution. Her health gave way irrecoverably. Her face grew thin
and wan without losing any of its spiritual beauty, as her soul looked
through its ever more transparent covering, which daily grew more and
more aetherialized as she faded away. A hectic flush, like a spot of
fire, came and went for a time, and at last set