This entry of woman into the jealous, cruel heaven depicted by the Old Testament, this figure of whiteness set at the feet of the awesome Trinity, appeared to him the very grace itself of religion, the one consolation for all the dread inspired by things of faith, the one refuge when he found himself lost amidst the mysteries of dogma.  And when he had thus proved to himself, point by point, that she was the way to Jesus—­easy, short, perfect, and certain—­he surrendered himself anew to her, wholly and without remorse:  he strove to be her true devotee, dead to self and steeped in submission.

It was an hour of divine voluptuousness!  The books treating of devotion to the Virgin burned his hands.  They spoke to him in a language of love, warm, fragrant as incense.  Mary no longer seemed a young maiden veiled in white, standing with crossed arms, a foot or two away from his pillow.  She came surrounded by splendour, even as John saw her, clothed with the sun, crowned with twelve stars, and having the moon beneath her feet.  She perfumed him with her fragrance, inflamed him with longing for heaven, ravished him even with the ardent glow of the planets flaming on her brow.  He threw himself before her and called himself her slave.  No word could have been sweeter than that word of slave, which he repeated, which he relished yet more and more as it trembled on his stammering tongue, whilst casting himself at her feet—­to become her thing, her mite, the dust lightly scattered by the waving of her azure robe.  With David he exclaimed:  ‘Mary is made for me,’ and with the Evangelist he added:  ‘I have taken her for my all.’  He called her his ’beloved mistress,’ for words failed him, and he fell into the prattle of child or lover, his breath breaking with intensity of passion.  She was the Blessed among women, the Queen of Heaven glorified by the nine Choirs of Angels, the Mother of Predilection, the Treasure of the Lord.  All the vivid imagery of her cult unrolled itself before him comparing to her an earthly paradise of virgin soil, with beds of flowering virtues, green meadows of hope, impregnable towers of strength, and smiling dwellings of confidence.  Again she was a fountain sealed by the Holy Ghost, a shrine and dwelling-place of the Holy Trinity, the Throne of God, the City of God, the Altar of God, the Temple of God, and the World of God.  And he walked in that garden, in its shade, its sunlight, beneath its enchanting greenery; he sighed after the water of that Fountain; he dwelt within Mary’s beauteous precincts—­resting, hiding, heedlessly straying there, drinking in the milk of infinite love that fell drop by drop from her virginal bosom.