had never received the seal of God, as it were, to his commission, was
a fact which struck the imagination of the village as of much more
importance than many greater things--being at once more visible and
matter-of-fact, and of more mystical and spiritual efficacy than any
other circumstance in the dreadful tale.

Jeanne was in the garden as usual, seated, as we should say in Scotland,
at "her seam," not quite thirteen, a child in all the innocence of
infancy, yet full of dreams, confused no doubt and vague, with those
impulses and wonderings--impatient of trouble, yearning to give
help--which tremble on the chaos of a young soul like the first
lightening of dawn upon the earth. It was summer, and afternoon, the
time of dreams. It would be easy in the employment of legitimate fancy
to heighten the picturesqueness of that quiet scene--the little girl
with her favourite bells, the birds picking up the crumbs of brown
bread at her feet. She was thinking of nothing, most likely, in a vague
suspense of musing, the wonder of youth, the awakening of thought, as
yet come to little definite in her child's heart--looking up from her
work to note some passing change of the sky, a something in the air
which was new to her. All at once between her and the church there shone
a light on the right hand, unlike anything she had ever seen before; and
out of it came a voice equally unknown and wonderful. What did the voice
say? Only the simplest words, words fit for a child, no maxim or mandate
above her faculties--"_Jeanne, sois bonne et sage enfant; va souvent
à l'église._" Jeanne, be good! What more could an archangel, what
less could the peasant mother within doors, say? The little girl was
frightened, but soon composed herself. The voice could be nothing
but sacred and blessed which spoke thus. It would not appear that she
mentioned it to anyone. It is such a secret as a child, in that wavering
between the real and unreal, the world not realised of childhood, would