And colour also was returning to
her livid face. She was already resuscitating.
"Oh! Monsieur le Cure, pray do tell them to take me--I feel that I shall
be cured," she exclaimed.
With a loving, fatherly smile on his good-natured face, Abbe Judaine
listened to them all, and allayed their impatience with kind words. They
would soon set out; but they must be reasonable, and allow sufficient
time for things to be organised; and besides, the Blessed Virgin did not
like to have violence done her; she bided her time, and distributed her
divine favours among those who behaved themselves the best.
As he paused before Marie's bed and beheld her, stammering entreaties
with joined hands, he again paused. "And you, too, my daughter, you are
in a hurry?" he said. "Be easy, there is grace enough in heaven for you
all."
"I am dying of love, Father," she murmured in reply. "My heart is so
swollen with prayers, it stifles me--"
He was greatly touched by the passion of this poor emaciated child, so
harshly stricken in her youth and beauty, and wishing to appease her, he
called her attention to Madame Vetu, who did not move, though with her
eyes wide open she stared at all who passed.
"Look at madame, how quiet she is!" he said. "She is meditating, and she
does right to place herself in God's hands, like a little child."
However, in a scarcely audible voice, a mere breath, Madame Vetu
stammered: "Oh! I am suffering, I am suffering."
At last, at a quarter to eight o'clock, Madame de Jonquiere warned her
charges that they would do well to prepare themselves.
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