Every morning, on rising at the seminary, he greeted Mary with a hundred bows, his face turned towards the strip of sky visible from his window.  And at night in like fashion he bade her farewell with his eyes fixed upon the stars.  Often, when he thus gazed out on fine bright nights, when Venus gleamed golden and dreamy through the warm atmosphere, he forgot himself, and then, like a soft song, would fall from his lips the Ave maris Stella, that tender hymn which set before his eyes a distant azure land, and a tranquil sea, scarce wrinkled by a caressing quiver, and illuminated by a smiling star, a very sun in size.  He recited, too, the Salve Regina, the Regina Coeli, the O gloriosa Domina, all the prayers and all the canticles.  He would read the Office of the Virgin, the holy books written in her honour, the little Psalter of St. Bonaventura, with such devout tenderness, that he could not turn the leaves for tears.  He fasted and mortified himself, that he might offer up to her his bruised and wounded flesh.  Ever since the age of ten he had worn her livery—­the holy scapular, the twofold image of Mary sewn on squares of cloth, whose warmth upon his chest and back thrilled him with delight.  Later on, he also took to wearing the little chain in token of his loving slavery.  But his greatest act of love was ever the Angelic Salutation, the Ave Maria, his heart’s perfect prayer.  ’Hail, Mary——­’ and he saw her advancing towards him, full of grace, blessed amongst women; and he cast his heart at her feet for her to tread on it in sweetness.  He multiplied and repeated that salutation in a hundred different ways, ever seeking some more efficacious one.  He would say twelve Aves to commemorate the crown of twelve stars that encircled Mary’s brow; he would say fourteen in remembrance of her fourteen joys; at another time he would recite seven decades of them in honour of the years she lived on earth.  For hours the beads of his Rosary would glide between his fingers.  Then, again, on certain days of mystical assignation he would launch into the endless muttering of the Rosary.

When, alone in his cell, with time to give to his love, he knelt upon the floor, the whole of Mary’s garden with its lofty flowers of chastity blossomed around him.  Between his fingers glided the Rosary’s wreath of Aves, intersected by Paters, like a garland of white roses mingled with the lilies of the Annunciation, the blood-hued flowers of Calvary, and the stars of the Coronation.  He would slowly tread those fragrant paths, pausing at each of the fifteen dizains of Aves, and dwelling on its corresponding mystery; he was beside himself with joy, or grief, or triumph, according as the mystery belonged to one or other of the three series—­the joyful, the sorrowful, or the glorious.  What an incomparable legend it was, the history of Mary, a complete human life, with all its smiles and tears and triumph, which he lived over again from end to