g from the fatigues of travel, was all the more
easily impressed by the dismal air of a nunnery of the dead. The true
type of this class was the Sister Remusat, already a corpse to outward
seeming, and soon to be really dead. Cadiere was moved to admire so
lofty a piece of perfection. Her treacherous companion allured her
with the proud conceit of being such another and filling her place
anon.

During this short trip of hers, Girard, who remained amid the stifling
heats of Toulon, had met with a dismal fall. He would often go to the
girl Laugier, who believed herself to be ecstatic, and "comfort" her
to such good purpose that he got her presently with child. When Mdlle.
Cadiere came back in the highest ecstasy, as if like to soar away, he
for his part was become so carnal, so given up to pleasure, that he
"let fall on her ears a whisper of love." Thereat she took fire, but
all, as anyone may see, in her own pure, saintly, generous way; as
eager to keep him from falling, as devoting herself even to die for
his sake.

One of her saintly gifts was her power of seeing into the depths of
men's hearts. She had sometimes chanced to learn the secret life and
morals of her confessors, to tell them of their faults; and this, in
their fear and amazement, many of them had borne with great humility.
One day this summer, on seeing Guiol come into her room, she suddenly
said, "Wicked woman! what have you been doing?"

"And she was right," said Guiol herself, at a later period; "for I had
just been doing an evil deed." Perhaps she had just been rendering
Laugier the same midwife's service which next year she wished to
render Batarelle.

Very likely, indeed, Laugier had entrusted to Catherine, at whose
house she often slept, the secret of her good fortune, the love, the
fatherly caresses of her saint. It was a hard and stormy trial for
Catherine's spirits. On the one side, she had learnt by heart
Girard's maxim, that whatever a saint may do is holy. But on the other
hand, her native honesty and the whole course of her education
compelled her to believe that over-fondness for the creature was ever
a mortal sin. This woeful tossing between two different doctrines
quite finished the poor girl, brought on within her dreadful storms,
until at last she fancied herself possessed with a devil.

And here her goodness of heart was made manifest. Without humbling
Girard, she told him she had a vision of a soul tormented with impure
thoughts