them?  Are we less pure than the angels?  Are our souls less separated from the earth than they will be after death?  Oh, Madeleine, what is there in us wherewith the Lord can be displeased?  Can it be that we pray together, that with faces prostrate in the dust before His altars, we ask for early death to take us while yet youth and love are ours?  Or that, musing together beneath the funereal trees of the churchyard, we yearned for one grave, smiling at the idea of death, and weeping at life?  Or that, when thou kneelest before me at the tribunal of penitence, and, speaking in the presence of God, canst find naught of evil to reveal to me, so wholly have I kept thy soul in the pure regions of heaven?  What, then, could offend our Creator?  Perhaps—­yes! perhaps some spirit of heaven may have envied me my happiness when on Easter morn I saw thee kneeling before me, purified by long austerities from the slight stain which original sin had left in thee!  Beautiful, indeed, wert thou!  Thy glance sought thy God in heaven, and my trembling hand held His image to thy pure lips, which human lip had never dared to breathe upon.  Angelic being!  I alone participated in the secret of the Lord, in the one secret of the entire purity of thy soul; I it was that united thee to thy Creator, who at that moment descended also into my bosom.  Ineffable espousals, of which the Eternal himself was the priest, you alone were permitted between the virgin and her pastor! the sole joy of each was to see eternal happiness beginning for the other, to inhale together the perfumes of heaven, to drink in already the harmony of the spheres, and to feel assured that our souls, unveiled to God and to ourselves alone, were worthy together to adore Him.

   “’What scruple still weighs upon thy soul, O my sister?  Dost thou
   think I have offered too high a worship to thy virtue?  Fearest thou
   so pure an admiration should deter me from that of the Lord?’”

Houmain had reached this point when the door through which the witnesses had withdrawn suddenly opened.  The judges anxiously whispered together.  Laubardemont, uncertain as to the meaning of this, signed to the fathers to let him know whether this was some scene executed by their orders; but, seated at some distance from him, and themselves taken by surprise, they could not make him understand that they had not prepared this interruption.  Besides, ere they could exchange looks, to the amazement of the assembly, three women, ‘en chemise’, with naked feet, each with a cord round her neck and a wax taper in her hand, came through the door and advanced to the middle of the platform.  It was the Superior of the Ursulines, followed by Sisters Agnes and Claire.  Both the latter were weeping; the Superior was very pale, but her bearing was firm, and her eyes were fixed and tearless.  She knelt; her companions followed her example.  Everything was in such confusion that no one thought of checking them; and in a clear, firm voice she pronounced these words, which resounded in every corner of the hall: