Then—­delay the rigor of your judgment!—­she began,—­yes, she, this Jacqueline, began to count the cost of what she had done.  She was not a sordid soul, she had not a miserly nature.  Before she had gone far in that strange computation, she paused abruptly, with a crimsoned face, and not with tearless eyes.  Counting the cost!  Estimating the sacrifice!  Had, then, her purpose been less holy because excited by falsehood and sustained through delusion?  Was she less loving and less true, because deceived?  And was she to lament that Christ, the one and only Priest, rather than another instrumentality, was the deliverer of her beloved from the power of death?

No ritual was remembered, and no formula consulted, when she cried out,—­“It is so! and I thank Thee!  Only give me now, my Jesus, a purpose as holy as that Thou hast taken away!”

But she had not come into her chamber to spend a solitary evening there.  Turning away from the window, she bestowed a little care upon her person, smoothed away the traces of her day’s labor, and after all was done she lingered yet longer.  She was going out, evidently.  Whither?  To visit the mother of John Leclerc.  She must carry back the tracts the good woman had lent her.  Their contents had firm lodgement in her memory.

Others might run to and fro in the streets, and talk about the corners, and prognosticate with passion, and defy, in the way of cowardice, where safety rather than the truth is well assured.  If one woman could console another, Jacqueline wished that she might console Leclerc’s mother.  And if any words of wisdom could drop from the poor old woman’s lips while her soul was in this strait, Jacqueline desired to hear those words.

Down the many flights of stairs she went across the court, and then along the street, to the house where the wool-comber lived.

A brief pause followed her knock for admittance.  She repeated it.  Then was heard a sound from within,—­a step crossing the floor.  The door opened, and there stood the mother of Leclerc, ready to face any danger, the very Fiend himself.

But when she saw that it was Jacqueline, only Jacqueline,—­an angel, as one might say, and not a devil,—­the terrible look passed from her face; she opened the door wide.

“Come in, child! come in!”

So Jacqueline went into the room where John had worked and thought, reasoned, argued, prayed.

This is the home of the man because of whom many are this night offended in the city of Meaux.  This is the place whence issued the power that has set the tongues to talking, and the minds to thinking, and the hearts to hoping, and the authorities to avenging.

A grain of mustard-seed is the kingdom of heaven in a figure; the wandering winds a symbol of the Pentecostal power:  a dove did signify the descent of God to man.  This poor chamber, so pent in, and so lowly, so obscure, has its significance.  Here has a life been lived; and not the least does it import, that walls are rough and the ceiling low.