I thought, ’fi done!  You are going to make a fool of yourself now when it is all over, because why?  It is God who manages the world, and not you.  You pray to God to help you in your despair, and he has helped you.  He has sent you a good, kind husband who adores you; who asks only to be a brother to your sisters and brothers, and son to Clementine; who has given you more than you ever possessed in your life—­but because he did not come out of the bonne aventure—­and who gets a husband out of the bonne aventure?—­and would your brun have come to you in your misfortune?’ I am sure God inspired those thoughts in me.

[Illustration:  “I wept, I wept, I wept.”]

“I tell you, I rose from that bed—­naturally I had thrown myself upon it.  Quick I washed my face, I brushed my hair, and, you see these bows of ribbons,—­look, here are the marks of the tears,—­I turned them. He, Loulou, it occurs to me, that if you examined the blue bows on a bride’s negligee, you might always find tears on the other side; for do they not all have to marry whom God sends? and am I the only one who had dreams?  It is the end of dreams, marriage; and that is the good thing about it.  God lets us dream to keep us quiet, but he knows when to wake us up, I tell you.  The blue bows knew!  And now, you see, I prefer my husband to my brun; in fact, Loulou, I adore him, and I am furiously jealous about him.  And he is so good to Clementine and the poor little children; and see his photograph—­a blond, and not good-looking, and small!

“But poor papa!  If he had been alive, I am sure he never would have agreed with God about my marriage.”

THE MIRACLE CHAPEL

Every heart has a miracle to pray for.  Every life holds that which only a miracle can cure.  To prove that there have never been, that there can never be, miracles does not alter the matter.  So long as there is something hoped for,—­that does not come in the legitimate channel of possible events,—­so long as something does come not to be hoped or expected in the legitimate channel of possible events, just so long will the miracle be prayed for.

The rich and the prosperous, it would seem, do not depend upon God so much, do not need miracles, as the poor do.  They do not have to pray for the extra crust when starvation hovers near; for the softening of an obdurate landlord’s heart; for strength in temptation, light in darkness, salvation from vice; for a friend in friendlessness; for that miracle of miracles, an opportunity to struggling ambition; for the ending of a dark night, the breaking of day; and, oh! for God’s own miracle to the bedside-watchers—­the change for the better, when death is there and the apothecary’s skill too far, far away.  The poor, the miserable, the unhappy, they can show their miracles by the score; that is why God is called the poor man’s friend.  He does not mind, so they say, going in the face of logic and reason to relieve them; for often the kind and charitable are sadly hampered by the fetters of logic and reason, which hold them, as it were, away from their own benevolence.