“How?” asked Angela with quick interest.

“Your wise men must tell you,” said Manuel, with a grave little smile, “I know no more than what Christ has said,—­and He told us plainly that not even a sparrow shall fall to the ground without our Father.  ‘Fear not,’ He said, ‘Ye are more than many sparrows.’  So, as there is nothing which is useless, and nothing which is wasted, it is very certain that love, which is the greatest of all things, cannot lose what it loves.”

Angela’s eyes filled with tears, she knew not why, “Love which is the greatest of all things cannot lose what it loves!”—­How wonderfully tender was Manuel’s voice as he spoke these words!

“You have very sweet thoughts, Manuel,” she said, “You would be a great comfort to anyone in sorrow.”

“That is what I have always wished to be,” he answered, “But you are not in sorrow yet,—­that is to come!”

She looked up quickly.

“You think I shall have some great trouble?” she asked, with a little tremour in her accents.

“Yes, most surely you will!” replied Manuel, “No one in the world ever tried to be good and great at the same time without suffering miscomprehension and bitter pain.  Did not Christ say, ’In the world ye shall have tribulation’?”

“Yes,—­and I have often wondered why,” said Angela musingly.

“Only that you might learn to love God best,” answered Manuel with a delicate inflexion of compassion in his voice, “And that you might know for certain and beyond all doubt that this life is not all.  There is something better—­greater—­higher!—­a glory that is worth winning because immortal.  ’In the world ye shall have tribulation’—­ yes, that is true!—­but the rest of the saying is true also—­’Be of good cheer,—­I have overcome the world’!”

Moved by an impulse she could not understand, Angela suddenly turned and extended her hands with an instinctive grace that implied reverence as well as humility.  The boy clasped them lightly then let them go,—­and without more words went softly away and left her.

XIII.

The Church of Notre Dame de Lorette in Paris with its yellow stucco columns, and its hideous excess of paint and gilding, might be a ball-room designed after the newest ideas of a vulgar nouveau riche rather than a place of sanctity.  The florid-minded Blondel, pupil of the equally florid-minded Regnault, hastily sketched in some of the theatrical frescoes in the “Chapel of the Eucharist,” and a misguided personage named Orsel, splashed out the gaudy decorations of the “Chapel of the Virgin.”  The whole edifice glares at the spectator like a badly-managed limelight, and the tricky, glittering, tawdry effect blisters one’s very soul.  But here may be seen many little select groups out of the hell of Paris,—­fresh from the burning as it were, and smelling of the brimstone,—­demons who enjoy their demonism,—­satyrs, concerning