inconceivable purposes of the Almighty; and again his thoughts turned to
that journey to Dauphiné which haunted his memory.

"Ah! but the chain of the High Alps and the peaks of La Salette," said
he to himself; "that huge white hotel, that church coloured with dirty
yellow lime-wash, vaguely Byzantine and vaguely Romanesque in its
architecture, and that little cell with the plaster Christ nailed to a
flat black wooden Cross--that tiny Sanctuary plainly white-washed, and
so small that one could step across it in any direction--they were
pregnant with her presence, all the same!"

"Surely She revisited that spot, in spite of Her apparent desertion, to
comfort all comers; She seemed so close at hand, so attentive and so
grieving, in the evening as one sat alone by the light of a candle, that
the soul seemed to burst open like a pod shedding the fruit of sin, the
seeds of evil deeds; and repentance, that had been so tardily evolved,
and sometimes so indefinite, became so suddenly despotic and
unmistakable that the penitent dropped on his knees by the bed, and
buried his head sobbing in the sheets. Ah, those were evenings of mortal
dulness and yet sweetly sad! The soul was rent, its very fibres laid
bare, but was not the Virgin at hand, so pitiful, so motherly, that
after, the worst was over She took the bleeding soul in her arms and
rocked it to sleep like a sick child.

"Then, during the day, the church afforded a refuge from the frenzy of
giddiness that came over one; the eye, bewildered by the precipices on
every side, distracted by the sight of the clouds that suddenly gathered
below and steamed off in white fleece from the sides of the rocks, found
rest under the shelter of those walls.