flicker on her lips, "what other feeling does the Church
leave to a lost soul unless it be despair?"

As he heard these words the rector realized the vast extent of the
ravages in her soul.

"Ah!" he said, "you are making this terrace your hell, when it ought to
be your Calvary from which to rise to heaven."

"I have no pride left to place me on such a pedestal," she answered, in
a tone which revealed the self-contempt that lay within her.

Here the priest, by one of those inspirations which are both natural and
frequent in noble souls, the man of God lifted the child in his arms
and kissed its forehead, saying, in a fatherly voice, "Poor little one!"
Then he gave it himself to the nurse, who carried it away.

Madame Sauviat looked at her daughter, and saw the efficacy of the
rector's words; for Veronique's eyes, long dry, were moist with tears.
The old woman made a sign to the priest and disappeared.

"Let us walk," said the rector to Veronique leading her along the
terrace to the other end, from which Les Tascherons could be seen. "You
belong to me; I must render account to God for your sick soul."

"Give me time to recover from my depression," she said to him.

"Your depression comes from injurious meditation," he replied, quickly.

"Yes," she said, with the simplicity of a grief which has reached the
point of making no attempt at concealment.

"I see plainly that you have fallen into the gulf of apathy," he cried.
"If there is a degree of physical suffering at which all sense of
modesty expires, there is also a degree of moral suffering in which all
vigor of soul is lost; I know that."

She was surprised to hear that subtle observation and to find such
tender pity from this village rector; but, as we have seen already, the
exquisite delicacy which no passion had ever touched gave him the true
maternal spirit for his flock. This _mens devinior_, this apostolic
tenderness, places the priest above all other men and makes him, in a
sense, divine. Madame Graslin had not as yet had enough experience of
Monsieur Bonnet to know this beauty hidden in his soul like a spring,
from which flowed grace and purity and true life.

"Ah! monsieur," she cried, giving herself wholly up to him by a gesture,
a look, such as the dying give.

"I understand you," he said. "What is to be done? What will you become?"

They walked in silence the whole length of the balustrade, facing toward
the plain. The solemn moment seemed pr