‘Mais, Mademoiselle,’ I said; ’temptation is only to prove our strength.’

‘You are strong.  You have conquered,’ she said, and clasped my hand.  ‘But then you loved him.’

I suppose I smiled a little with my conscious bliss, for this strange young princess hastily asked:  ’Did you love him?  I mean, before you were married.’

‘Oh no,’ I said, glad to disavow what was so shocking in my new country.

’But he is lovable?  Ah! that is it.  While you are praying to Heaven, and devoting yourself to a husband whom you love, remember that if I ruin my soul, it is because they would have it so!’

At that moment there was a pause.  A gentleman, the Marquis de Feuquieres, had come in, bringing with him a very young lad, in the plian black gown and white collar of a theological student; and it was made known that the Marquis had been boasting of the wonderful facility of a youth was studying at the College of Navarre, and had declared that he could extemporise with eloquence upon any subject.  Some one had begged that the youth might be fetched and set to preach on a text proposed to him at the moment, and here he was.

Madame de Rambouillet hesitated a little at the irreverence, but the Duke of Enghien requested that the sermon might take place, and she consented, only looking at her watch and saying it was near midnight, so that the time was short.  M. Voiture, the poet, carried round a velvet bag, and each was to write a text on a slip of paper to be drawn out at haphazard.

We two showed each other what we wrote.  My husband’s was—­’Love is strong as death;’ mine—­’Let the wife cleave unto her husband.’  But neither of them was drawn out.  I saw by the start that Mademoiselle de Bourbon gave that it was hers, when the first paper was taken out—­ ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!’ a few minutes were offered to the young Abbe to collect his thoughts, but he declined them, and he was led to a sort of a dais at the end of the salon, while the chairs were placed in a half-circle.  Some of the ladies tittered a little, though Madame de Rambouillet looked grave; but they composed themselves.  We all stood and repeated the Ave, and then seated ourselves; while the youth, in a voice already full and sweet, began solemnly:  ‘What is life? what is man?’

I can never convey to you how this world and all its fleeting follies seemed to melt away before us, and how each of us felt our soul alone in the presence of our Maker, as though nothing mattered, or ever would matter, but how we stood with Him.  One hardly dared to draw one’s breath.  Mademoiselle de Bourbon was almost stifled with the sobs she tried to restrain lest her mother should make her retire.  My husband held my hand, and pressed it unseen.  He was a deeper, more thoughtful man ever after he heard that voice, which seemed to come, as it were, from the Angel at Bochim who warned the Israelites; and that night we dedicated ourselves to the God who had not let us be put asunder.