ural standpoint. Many priests
are thus capable of a naivete which, on careful analysis, is often
in the right. But at the moment the antithesis between the authentic
reality and that which they believe, constitutes an irony almost absurd.
When he had baptized Fanny, the old Bishop of Clermont was possessed by
a joy so deep that he said to her, to express to her the more delicately
the tender respect of his friendship:

"I can now say as did Saint Monica after the baptism of Saint Augustine:
'Cur hic sim, nescio; jam consumpta spe hujus saeculi'. I do not know
why I remain here below. All my hope of the age is consummated. And like
her I can add--the only thing which made me desire to remain awhile was
to see you a Catholic before dying. The traveller, who has tarried, has
now nothing to do but to go. He has gathered the last and the prettiest
flower."....

Noble and faithful apostle, who was indeed to go so shortly after,
meriting what they said of him, that which the African bishop said
of his mother: "That religious soul was at length absolved from her
body.".... He did not anticipate that he would pay dearly for that
realization of his last wish! He did not foresee that she whom he
ingenuously termed his most beautiful flower was to become to him the
principal cause of bitter sorrow. Poor, grand Cardinal! It was the final
trial of his life, the supremely bitter drop in his chalice, to assist
at the disenchantment which followed so closely upon the blissful
intoxication of his gentle neophyte's first initiation. To whom, if
not to him, should she have gone to ask counsel, in all the tormenting
doubts which she at once began to have in her feelings with regard to
her fiance?

It was, therefore, that on the day following the evening on which
imprudent Ardea had jested so persistently upon a subject sacred to her
that she rang at the door of the apartment which Monseigneur Guerillot
occupied in the large mansion on Rue des Quatre-Fontaines. There was
no question of incriminating the spirit of those pleasantries, nor of
relating her humiliating observations on the Prince's intoxication. No.
She wished to ease her mind, on which rested a shade of sorrow. At the
time of her betrothal, she had fancied she loved Ardea, for the emotion
of her religious life at length freed had inspired her with gratitude
for him who was, however, only the pretext of that exemption. She
trembled to-day, not only at not loving him any more, b