“God has sent you as an angel of light to draw me from the abyss. He has confided a sacred mission to you; who knows, if I should lose you, whither the sorrow that consumes me might lead me, because of the sad experience I have been through, the terrible combat between my youth and my ennui?”
That thought, sincere enough on my part, had great weight with a woman of lofty devotion whose soul was as pious as it was ardent. It was probably the only consideration that induced Madame Pierson to permit me to see her.
I was preparing to visit her one day when some one knocked at my door, and I saw Mercanson enter, that priest I had met in the garden on the occasion of my first visit. He began to make excuses that were as tiresome as himself for presuming to call on me without having made my acquaintance; I told him that I knew him very well as the nephew of our cure, and asked what I could do for him.
He turned uneasily from one side to the other with an air of constraint, searching for phrases and fingering everything on the table before him as if at a loss what to say. Finally he informed me that Madame Pierson was ill and that she had sent word to me by him that she would not be able to see me that day.
“Is she ill? Why, I left her late yesterday afternoon, and she was very well at that time!”
He bowed.
“But,” I continued, “if she is ill why send word to me by a third person? She does not live so far away that a useless call would harm me.”
The same response from Mercanson. I could not understand what this peculiar manner signified, much less why she had entrusted her mission to him.
“Very well,” I said, “I shall see her to-morrow and she will explain what this means.”
His hesitation continued.