robes were found empty through sheer giving), the
disdain for every form of property, only intensified her delight in all
the beautiful things which could be shared with others. No one ever
possessed, in the true sense of passionate enjoyment, as Gabrielle
Delzant possessed, for instance, the fine passages of Corneille, or
Maurice de Guerin, or Victor Hugo, which she asked her husband to read
to us of an evening; as she possessed the refined lie of the land, the
delicate autumn colouring of her modest and gracious southern country;
and those old-fashioned Paris streets, through which we eagerly
wandered, seeking obscure little churches and remote convents where
Pascal had lived or Andre Chenier lay buried. Nay, no one, methinks,
ever tasted so much of romance as this lady in her studious invalid's
existence; for did she not extract wonderful and humorous adventures,
not only out of the lives of her friends, but her own quiet comings and
goings? Do you remember, dear Madame Blanc, that rainy day that she and
I returned to you, brimful of marvellous adventures, when we had found a
feather and shell shop built up against an old church in the Marais; or
was it after wandering in the dripping Jardin des Plantes, peering at
the white skeletons of animals of the already closed museum, and
returning home in floods by many and devious trams and 'buses? Ah, no
one could enjoy things, and make others enjoy them by sheer childlike
lovingness, as she did!

For her austerity, like that of the nobler pagans (and there are no
nobler pagans, or more reverent to paganism, than true Christian
saints, believe me) pruned all natural possibilities into fruitfulness
of joy. And her reckless giving away of interest and of loving-kindness,
enabled her, not merely to feed the multitude, but to carry home
miraculous basketfuls, and more, methinks, than twelve.

And thus, to return to my main theme, there was, transmuting all her
orthodoxy (and making her accept some unorthodox among her
fellow-worshippers) a deep and fervent adoration of life and
fruitfulness, and an abhorrence of death.

Her letters to me are full of it. Abhorrence of death. Death not of the
body, for she held that but an incident, an accident almost, in a life
eternal or universal; but death of the soul. And this she would have
defined, though she was never fond of defining, as loss of the power of
extracting joy and multiplying it through thankfulness.

A matter less of be