Then she embraced me with tears and added:
“I can speak, but I am stifled when I speak; I am stifling. Air!”
I burst into tears, opened the window, and a few minutes afterward the priest entered. I went up to him; when he knew where he was, he seemed afraid of being badly received.
“Come in boldly, father,” I said to him.
He stayed a very short time in the room, and when he came out he said to me:
“She lived a sinner, and she will die a Christian.”
A few minutes afterward he returned with a choir boy bearing a crucifix, and a sacristan who went before them ringing the bell to announce that God was coming to the dying one.
They went all three into the bed-room where so many strange words have been said, but was now a sort of holy tabernacle.
I fell on my knees. I do not know how long the impression of what I saw will last, but I do not think that, till my turn comes, any human thing can make so deep an impression on me.
The priest anointed with holy oil the feet and hands and forehead of the dying woman, repeated a short prayer, and Marguerite was ready to set out for the heaven to which I doubt not she will go, if God has seen the ordeal of her life and the sanctity of her death.