Many a night had the young man spent in this way.  Daybreak had found him still murmuring his prayers.  It was the moon, he would say to cheat himself, that was making the stars wane.  His superiors had to reprove him for those vigils, which left him languid and pale as if he had been losing blood.  On the wall of his cell had long hung a coloured engraving of the Sacred Heart of Mary, an engraving which showed the Virgin smiling placidly, throwing open her bodice, and revealing a crimson fissure, wherein glowed her heart, pierced with a sword, and crowned with white roses.  That sword tormented him beyond measure, brought him an intolerable horror of suffering in woman, the very thought of which scattered his pious submissiveness to the winds.  He erased the weapon, and left only the crowned and flaming heart which seemed to be half torn from that exquisite flesh, as if tendered as an offering to himself.  And it was then he felt beloved:  Mary was giving him her heart, her living heart, even as it throbbed in her bosom, dripping with her rosy blood.

In all this there was no longer the imagery of devout passion, but a material entity, a prodigy of affection which impelled him, when he was praying before the engraving, to open out his hands in order that he might reverently receive the heart that leaped from that immaculate bosom.  He could see it, hear it beat; he was loved, that heart was beating for himself!  His whole being quickened with rapture; he would fain have kissed that heart, have melted in it, have lain beside it within the depths of that open breast.  Mary’s love for him was an active one; she desired him to be near her, to be wholly hers in the eternity to come; her love was efficacious, too, she was ever solicitous for him, watching over him everywhere, guarding him from the slightest breach of his fidelity.  She loved him tenderly, more than the whole of womankind together, with a love as azure, as deep, as boundless as the sky itself.  Where could he ever find so delightful a mistress?  What earthly caress could be compared to the air in which he moved, the breath of Mary?  What mundane union or enjoyment could be weighed against that everlasting flower of desire which grew unceasingly, and yet was never over-blown?  At this thought the Magnificat would exhale from his mouth, like a cloud of incense.  He sang the joyful song of Mary, her thrill of joy at the approach of her Divine Spouse.  He glorified the Lord who overthrew the mighty from their thrones, and who sent Mary to him, poor destitute child that he was, dying of love on the cold tiled floor of his cell.