ntrol as he
did?--caring for all things and forgetting nothing; who else would, with
so much courage, have entered the city? and what other man, being a
person of the world and secular in all his thoughts, as, alas! it is so
common for men to be, would have so nobly acknowledged his obligations
to the good God when our misfortunes were over? My constant prayers for
his conversion do not make me incapable of perceiving the nobility of
his conduct. When the evidence has been incontestible he has not
hesitated to make a public profession of his gratitude, which all will
acknowledge to be the sign of a truly noble mind and a heart of gold.

I have long felt that the times were ripe for some exhibition of the
power of God. Things have been going very badly among us. Not only have
the powers of darkness triumphed over our holy church, in a manner ever
to be wept and mourned by all the faithful, and which might have been
expected to bring down fire from Heaven upon our heads, but the
corruption of popular manners (as might also have been expected) has
been daily arising to a pitch unprecedented. The fetes may indeed be
said to be observed, but in what manner? In the cabarets rather than in
the churches; and as for the fasts and vigils, who thinks of them? who
attends to those sacred moments of penitence? Scarcely even a few ladies
are found to do so, instead of the whole population, as in duty bound. I
have even seen it happen that my daughter-in-law and myself, and her
friend Madame de Bois-Sombre, and old Mere Julie from the market, have
formed the whole congregation. Figure to yourself the _bon Dieu_ and all
the blessed saints looking down from heaven to hear--four persons only
in our great Cathedral! I trust that I know that the good God does not
despise even two or three; but if any one will think of it--the great
bells rung, and the candles lighted, and the cure in his beautiful
robes, and all the companies of heaven looking on--and only us four!
This shows the neglect of all sacred ordinances that was in Semur.
While, on the other hand, what grasping there was for money; what fraud
and deceit; what foolishness and dissipation! Even the Mere Julie
herself, though a devout person, the pears she sold to us on the last
market day before these events, were far, very far, as she must have
known, from being satisfactory. In the same way Gros-Jean, though a
peasant from our own village near La Clairiere, and a man for whom we
h