s, roused in him a feeling of
shuddering repulsion which ten years' practice of the same prayers and
the same devotions had failed to weaken. But as the beads flowed on,
light suddenly burst upon the darkness of the Crucifixion, and the
resplendent glory of the five last Mysteries shone forth in all the
brightness of a cloudless sun. Mary was transfigured, and sang the
hallelujah of the Resurrection, the victory over Death and the eternity
of life. With outstretched hands, and dazed with admiration, she beheld
the triumph of her Son ascending into heaven on golden clouds, fringed
with purple. She gathered the Apostles round her, and, as on the day
of her conception, participated in the glow of the Spirit of Love,
descending now in tongues of fire. She, too, was carried up to heaven
by a flight of angels, borne aloft on their white wings like a spotless
ark, and tenderly set down amid the splendour of the heavenly thrones;
and there, in her supreme glory, amidst a splendour so dazzling that
the light of the sun was quenched, God crowned her with the stars of the
firmament. Impassioned love has but one word. In reciting a hundred and
fifty _Aves_ Serge had not once repeated himself. The monotonous murmur,
the ever recurring words, akin to the 'I love you' of lovers, assumed
each time a deeper and deeper meaning; and he lingered over it all,
expressed everything with the aid of the one solitary Latin sentence,
and learned to know Mary through and through, until, as the last bead of
his Rosary slipped from his hand, his heart grew faint with the thought
of parting from her.

Many a night had the young man spent in this way. Daybreak had found
him still murmuring his prayers. It was the moon, he would say to cheat
himself, that was making the stars wane. His superiors had to reprove
him for those vigils, which left him languid and pale as if he had been
losing blood. On the wall of his cell had long hung a coloured engraving
of the Sacred Heart of Mary, an engraving which showed the Virgin
smiling placidly, throwing open her bodice, and revealing a crimson
fissure, wherein glowed her heart, pierced with a sword, and crowned
with white roses. That sword tormented him beyond measure, brought him
an intolerable horror of suffering in woman, the very thought of which
scattered his pious submissiveness to the winds. He erased the weapon,
and left only the crowned and flaming heart which seemed to be half torn
from that exquisite