for suffering, his steadfast feeling of compassion, which rendered yet
sweeter the caress of the sunlight pervading that atmosphere of love. He
seated himself against the right-hand wall on a fragment of a fallen
column over which a huge laurel cast a deep-black shadow, fresh and
aromatic. In the antique greenish sarcophagus beside him, on which fauns
offered violence to nymphs, the streamlet of water trickling from the
mask incrusted in the wall, set the unchanging music of its crystal note,
whilst he read the newspapers and the letters which he received, all the
communications of good Abbe Rose, who kept him informed of his mission
among the wretched ones of gloomy Paris, now already steeped in fog and
mud.

One morning however, Pierre unexpectedly found Benedetta seated on the
fallen column which he usually made his chair. She raised a light cry of
surprise on seeing him, and for a moment remained embarrassed, for she
had with her his book "New Rome," which she had read once already, but
had then imperfectly understood. And overcoming her embarrassment she now
hastened to detain him, making him sit down beside her, and frankly
owning that she had come to the garden in order to be alone and apply
herself to an attentive study of the book, in the same way as some
ignorant school-girl. Then they began to chat like a pair of friends, and
the young priest spent a delightful hour. Although Benedetta did not
speak of herself, he realised that it was her grief alone which brought
her nearer to him, as if indeed her own sufferings enlarged her heart and
made her think of all who suffered in the world. Patrician as she was,
regarding social hierarchy as a divine law, she had never previously
thought of such things, and some pages of Pierre's book greatly
astonished her. What! one ought to take interest in the lowly, realise
that they had the same souls and the same griefs as oneself, and seek in
brotherly or sisterly fashion to make them happy? She certainly sought to