“And you never take any other nourishment?”

“Never.”  And then she would add,—­

“Aha! our friend, you see I am in disgrace up there!” and she would laugh cheerfully at herself and her appearance “If you had but seen me when I came back from Spain, where I went to visit Our Lady of the Pillar at Saragoza!  I was a negress.  With my large Crucifix on my breast, my gown looking like a nun’s—­every one asked:  ’What can that woman be?’ I looked like a charcoal-burner out for a holiday; no white to be seen but my cap, collar and cuffs; all the rest—­face, hands and petticoats—­quite black.”

“But you must have been very dull travelling about alone?”

“Not at all, our friend, the Saints kept me company on the way; they told me at which house I should find a lodging for the night, and I was sure of being well received.”

“And you never were refused hospitality?”

“Never.  To be sure I did not ask for much; when I was wandering I only begged for a piece of bread and a glass of water, and to rest on a truss of straw in the cow-house.”

“And Father Gevresin—­how did you first know him?”

“That is quite a long story.  Fancy!  Heaven, as a punishment, deprived me of the Communion for a year and three months to a day.  When I confessed to a priest, I owned to my intercourse with Our Saviour, and the Virgin and the Angels; then he at once treated me as a mad woman, unless he accused me of being possessed by the devil; to conclude, he refused me absolution, and I thought myself happy if he did not slam the little wicket of the confessional roughly in my face at my very first words.

“I believe I should have died of grief if the Lord had not at last had pity on me.  One Saturday, when I was in Paris, He sent me to Notre Dame des Victoires, where the Father was in the confessional.  He listened to me, he put me through long and severe tests, and then he granted me Communion.  I often went to him again as a penitent, and then the niece who kept house for him retired into a convent, and I took her place; and I have been his housekeeper near on ten years now—­”

She told her story with many breaks.  Since she had ceased to wander about the country, she followed the pilgrimages in Paris in honour of the Blessed Virgin, and she had a list of the most popular sanctuaries:  Notre-Dame des Victoires, Notre-Dame de Paris; Our Lady of Good Hope at Saint-Severin, of Ever-present Help at L’Abbaye au Bois, of Peace at the convent in the Rue Picpus, of the Sick at the church of Saint-Laurent, of Happy Deliverance—­a black Virgin from the church of Saint-Etienne des Gres—­in the care of the Sisters of Saint-Thomas de Villeneuve, Rue de Sevres; and outside Paris the shrines in the suburbs:  Our Lady of Miracles at Saint-Maur, of the Angels at Bondy, of the Virtues at Aubervilliers, of Good Keeping at Long Pont, and those of Notre-Dame at Spire, at Pontoise, &c.