e 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 time to purgatory.
This sentence, madame, you will learn at the very instant when the
executioner's axe strikes you; unless, indeed, the fire of charity has so
purified you in this life that you may pass, without any purgatory at
all, straight to the home of the blessed who surround the throne of the
Lord, there to receive a recompense for earthly martyrdom."

"Sir," replied the marquise, "I have such faith in all you say that I
feel I understand it all now, and I am satisfied."

The doctor and the marquise then resumed the confession that was
interrupted the night before. The marquise had during the night
recollected certain articles that she w