! Yes, you have well done in telling her that I was
unworthy (_mechante_). It is true,--unworthy in forgetting
duty,--unworthy in loving too well. O Monsieur! if I could live over
again that life,--that dear young life among the olive orchards! But the
good Christ (thank Him!) leads back the repentant wanderers into the
fold of His Church.

'Laus tibi, Christe!'

"And the poor child believes that I am in my grave! May be that were
better for her and better for me. But no, I shall clasp her to my heart
once more,--she, the poor babe! But I forget myself; it is a woman's
letter I have been reading. What earnestness! what maturity! what
dignity! what tenderness! And will she be as tender to the living as to
the erring one whom she believes dead? My heart stops when I ask myself.
Yes, I know she will. The Blessed Virgin whispers me that she will, and
I fly to greet her! A month, two months, three months, four months?--It
is an age.

"Monsieur! I cannot wait. I must take ship--sail--wings (if I could find
them), and go to meet my child. Until I do there is a tempest in my
brain--heart--everywhere. You are surprised, Monsieur, but there is
another reason why I should go to this land where Adele has lived. Do
you wish to know it? Listen, then, Monsieur!

"Do you know who this poor sufferer was whom our child had learned so to
love, who died in her arms, who sleeps in the graveyard there, and of
whom Adele thinks as of a mother? I have inquired, I have searched high
and low, I have fathomed all. Ah, my poor, good sister Marie! Only
Marie! You have never known her. In those other days at dear Arles she
was too good for you to know her. Yet even then she was a guardian
angel,--a guardian too late. _Mea culpa! Mea culpa!_

"I know it can be only Marie; I know it can be only she, who sleeps
under the sod in Ash----(_ce nom m'echappe_).

"Listen again: in those early, bitter charming days, when you, Monsieur,
knew the hillsides and the drives about our dear old town of Arles, poor
Marie was away; had she been there, I had never listened, as I did
listen, to the words you whispered in my ear. Only when it was too late,
she came. Poor, good Marie! how she pleaded with me! How her tender,
good face spoke reproaches to me! If I was the pride of our household,
she was the angel. She it was, who, knowing the worst, said, 'Julie,
this must end!' She it was who labored day and night to set me free from
the wicked web that bound m