call you by your baptized name,--you are here in the midst of ruins
caused by a great tempest. We have each been struck and wounded in our
hearts, our family interests, or our fortunes, by that whirlwind of
forty years, which overthrew religion and royalty, and dispersed the
elements of all that made old France. Words that seem quite harmless
do sometimes wound us all, and that is why we are so silent. We speak
rarely of ourselves; we forget ourselves, and we have found a way to
substitute another life for our lives. It is because, after hearing
your confidence at Monsieur Mongenod's, I thought there seemed a
likeness between your situation and ours, that I induced my four
friends to receive you among us; besides, we wanted another monk in
our convent. But what are you going to do? No one can face solitude
without some moral resources."

"Madame, I should be very glad, after hearing what you have said, if
you yourself would be the guide of my destiny."

"You speak like a man of the world," she answered, "and are trying to
flatter me,--a woman of sixty! My dear child," she went on, "let me
tell you that you are here among persons who believe strongly in God;
who have all felt his hand, and have yielded themselves to him almost
as though they were Trappists. Have you ever remarked the profound
sense of safety in a true priest when he has given himself to the
Lord, when he listens to his voice, and strives to make himself a
docile instrument in the hand of Providence? He has no longer vanity
or self-love,--nothing of all that which wounds continually the hearts
of the world. His quietude is equal to that of the fatalist; his
resignation does truly enable him to bear all. The true priest, such a
one as the Abbe de Veze, lives like a child with its mother; for the
Church, my dear Monsieur Godefroid, is a good mother. Well, a man can