It was there I made my first sacrifice!

The wreaths of flowers were arranged, the candles lighted, and the Tabernacle dressed with roses; but one was wanting fit to crown the whole!  All the neighboring gardens had been ransacked.  I alone possessed a flower worthy of such a place.  It was on the rose-tree given me by my mother on my birthday.  I had watched it for several months, and there was no other bud to blow on the tree.  There it was, half open, in its mossy nest, the object of such long expectations, and of all a child’s pride!  I hesitated for some moments.  No one had asked me for it; I might easily avoid losing it.  I should hear no reproaches, but one rose noiselessly within me.  When every one else had given all they had, ought I alone to keep back my treasure?  Ought I to grudge to God one of the gifts which, like all the rest, I had received from him?  At this last thought I plucked the flower from the stem, and took it to put at the top of the Tabernacle.  Ah! why does the recollection of this sacrifice, which was so hard and yet so sweet to me, now make me smile?  Is it so certain that the value of a gift is in itself, rather than in the intention?  If the cup of cold water in the gospel is remembered to the poor man, why should not the flower be remembered to the child?  Let us not look down upon the child’s simple act of generosity; it is these which accustom the soul to self-denial and to sympathy.  I cherished this moss-rose a long time as a sacred talisman; I had reason to cherish it always, as the record of the first victory won over myself.

It is now many years since I witnessed the celebration of the ’Fete Dieu’; but should I again feel in it the happy sensations of former days?  I still remember how, when the procession had passed, I walked through the streets strewed with flowers and shaded with green boughs.  I felt intoxicated by the lingering perfumes of the incense, mixed with the fragrance of syringas, jessamine, and roses, and I seemed no longer to touch the ground as I went along.  I smiled at everything; the whole world was Paradise in my eyes, and it seemed to me that God was floating in the air!

Moreover, this feeling was not the excitement of the moment:  it might be more intense on certain days, but at the same time it continued through the ordinary course of my life.  Many years thus passed for me in an expansion of heart, and a trustfulness which prevented sorrow, if not from coming, at least from staying with me.  Sure of not being alone, I soon took heart again, like the child who recovers its courage, because it hears its mother’s voice close by.  Why have I lost that confidence of my childhood?  Shall I never feel again so deeply that God is here?