"Father Murphy,"--or whatever the name was,--"your words comfort me."

"How is that?"

"Because--_'Voe quum benedixerint mihi homines!'_" [1]

[Footnote 1: "Woe unto me when all men speak well of me!"]

The appointed morning, when it came, was one of those exquisite days in
which there is such a universal harmony, that worship rises from the
heart like a spring.

"Truly," said Père Jerome to the companion who was to assist him in the
mass, "this is a sabbath day which we do not have to make holy, but only
to _keep_ so."

Maybe it was one of the secrets of Père Jerome's success as a preacher,
that he took more thought as to how he should feel, than as to what he
should say.

The cathedral of those days was called a very plain old pile, boasting
neither beauty nor riches; but to Père Jerome it was very lovely; and
before its homely altar, not homely to him, in the performance of those
solemn offices, symbols of heaven's mightiest truths, in the hearing of
the organ's harmonies, and the yet more elegant interunion of human
voices in the choir, in overlooking the worshipping throng which knelt
under the soft, chromatic lights, and in breathing the sacrificial odors
of the chancel, he found a deep and solemn joy; and yet I guess the
finest thought of his the while was one that came thrice and again: