Pierre took it reverently. "And with you, Father," he murmured.



The Absolving Dream


Antoine Courcy was one of those who are fitted and trained by nature
for the cure of souls. If you had spoken to him of psychiatry he would
not have understood you. The long word would have been Greek to him.
But the thing itself he knew well. The preliminary penance which he
laid upon Pierre Duval was remedial. It belonged to the true healing
art, which works first in the spirit.

When the broken soldier went down the hill, in the blaze of the
mid-morning sunlight, towards Domremey, there was much misgiving and
confusion in his thoughts. He did not comprehend why he was going,
except that he had promised. He was not sure that some one might not
know him, or perhaps out of mere curiosity stop him and question him.
It was a reluctant journey.

Yet it was in effect an unconscious pilgrimage to the one health-resort
that his soul needed. For Domremy and the region round about are
saturated with the most beautiful story of France. The life of Jeanne
d'Arc, simple and mysterious, humble and glorious, most human and most
heavenly, flows under that place like a hidden stream, rising at every
turn in springs and fountains. The poor little village lives in and for
her memory. Her presence haunts the ridges and the woods, treads the
green pastures, follows the white road beside the river, and breathes
in the never-resting valley-wind that marries the flowers in June and