ernal joy in seeing her erect, felt such an
awful sensation of discomfort, as though, indeed, the greatest of all
possible misfortunes had fallen upon him? Was he jealous of the divine
grace? Did he suffer because the Virgin, whilst healing her, had
forgotten him, whose soul was so afflicted? He remembered how he had
granted himself a last delay, fixed a supreme appointment with Faith for
the moment when the Blessed Sacrament should pass by, were Marie only
cured; and she was cured, and still he did not believe, and henceforth
there was no hope, for never, never would he be able to believe. Therein
lay the bare, bleeding sore. The truth burst upon him with blinding
cruelty and certainty--she was saved, he was lost. That pretended miracle
which had restored her to life had, in him, completed the ruin of all
belief in the supernatural. That which he had, for a moment, dreamed of
seeking, and perhaps finding, at Lourdes,--naive faith, the happy faith
of a little child,--was no longer possible, would never bloom again after
that collapse of the miraculous, that cure which Beauclair had foretold,
and which had afterwards come to pass, exactly as had been predicted.
Jealous! No--he was not jealous; but he was ravaged, full of mortal
sadness at thus remaining all alone in the icy desert of his
intelligence, regretting the illusion, the lie, the divine love of the
simpleminded, for which henceforth there was no room in his heart.

A flood of bitterness stifled him, and tears started from his eyes. He
had slipped on to the flagstones, prostrated by his anguish. And, by
degrees, he remembered the whole delightful story, from the day when
Marie, guessing how he was tortured by doubt, had become so passionately
eager for his conversion, taking hold of his hand in the gloom, retaining
it in her own, and stammering that she would pray for him--oh! pray for
him with her whole soul. She forgot herself, she entreated the Blessed
Virgin to save her friend rather than herself if there were but one grace
that she could obtain from her Divine Son. Then came another memory, the
memory of the delightful hours which they had spent together amid the
dense darkness of the trees during the night procession. There, again,
they had prayed for one another, mingled one in the other with so ardent
a desire for mutual happiness that, for a moment, they had attained to
the very depths of the love which gives and immolates itself. And now
their long, tear