ight find in this state of
things a radical explanation for those implacable social antagonisms,
those covetous desires, those revolts followed by endless repression,
which bring about revolutions, and by them all manner of tyranny. Let us
first respect the poor, let us love them, let us sincerely admire their
condition as one ennobled by God, if we wish them to become reconciled
with Him, and reconciled with the world. When the rich man is a
Christian, generous and respectful of the poor, when he practises the
virtues which most belong to his social position, the poor man is very
near to conforming to those virtues which Providence makes his more
immediate duty, humility, obedience, resignation to the will of God and
trust in Him and in those who rule in His name. The solution of the
great social problem lies, as it seems to us, in the spiritual love of
the poor. Outside of this, there is only the heathen slave below, and
tyranny above with all its terrors. That is what religious enthusiasm
foresaw in centuries less well organized but more religious than ours.

CHAPTER XIX

DEATH OF MGR. DE LAVAL

The end of a great career was now approaching. In the summer of 1707, a
long and painful illness nearly carried Mgr. de Laval away, but he
recovered, and convalescence was followed by manifest improvement. This
soul which, like the lamp of the sanctuary, was consumed in the
tabernacle of the Most High, revived suddenly at the moment of emitting
its last gleams, then suddenly died out in final brilliance. The
improvement in the condition of the venerable prelate was ephemeral; the
illness which had brought him to the threshold of the tomb proved fatal
some weeks later. He died in the midst of his labours, happy in proving
by the very origin of the disease which brought about his death, his
great love for the Saviour. It was, in fact, in prolonging on Good
Friday his pious stations in his chilly church (for our ancestors did
not heat their churches, even in seasons of rigorous cold), that he
received in his heel the frost-bite of which he died. Such is the name
the writers of the time give to this sore; in our days, when science has
defined certain maladies formerly misunderstood, it is permissible to
suppose that this so-called frost-bite was nothing else than diabetic
gangrene. No illusion could be cherished, and the venerable old man,
who had not, so to speak, passed a moment of his existence without
thinking of d