invisible to doubtful souls. When Fanny, already devoted to her
charities, confided in him the serious troubles of her mind and the
discord which had arisen between her and her father on the so essential
point of her baptism, the Cardinal replied:

"Have faith in God. He will give you a sign when your time has come."
And he uttered those words with an accent whose conviction had filled the
young girl with a certainty which had never left her.

In spite of his seventy years, and of the experiences of the confession,
in spite of the disenchanting struggle with the freemasonry of his French
diocese, which had caused his exile to Rome, the venerable man looked at
Fanny's marriage from a supernatural standpoint. Many priests are thus
capable of a naivete which, on careful analysis, is often in the right.
But at the moment the antithesis between the authentic reality and that
which they believe, constitutes an irony almost absurd. When he had
baptized Fanny, the old Bishop of Clermont was possessed by a joy so deep
that he said to her, to express to her the more delicately the tender
respect of his friendship:

"I can now say as did Saint Monica after the baptism of Saint Augustine:
'Cur hic sim, nescio; jam consumpta spe hujus saeculi'. I do not know
why I remain here below. All my hope of the age is consummated. And
like her I can add--the only thing which made me desire to remain awhile
was to see you a Catholic before dying. The traveller, who has tarried,
has now nothing to do but to go. He has gathered the last and the
prettiest flower."....

Noble and faithful apostle, who was indeed to go so shortly after,
meriting what they said of him, that which the African bishop said of his