When, a quarter of an hour later, Veronica, disturbed by some kind of presentiment, awoke, she became uneasy at feeling that Anthime was not beside her; she became still more uneasy when, having struck a match, she saw his crutch (which of necessity never left him) still standing by the bedside. The match went out between her fingers, for Anthime had taken the candle with him when he left the room; Veronica hastily slipped on a few things as best she could in the dark, and then in her turn leaving the room, she followed the thread of light which shone from beneath the laboratory door.
“Anthime, are you there, my dear?”
No answer. Veronica, listening with all her might and main, heard a singular noise. Then, sick with anxiety, she pushed open the door. What she saw transfixed her with amazement.
Her Anthime was there, straight in front of her. He was not sitting; he was not standing; the top of his head was on a level with the table and in the full light of the candle, which he had placed upon it; Anthime, the learned man of science, Anthime the atheist, who for many a long year had bowed neither his stiff knee nor his stubborn will (for it was remarkable how in his case body and soul kept pace with each other)—Anthime was kneeling!
He was on his knees, was Anthime; he was holding in his two hands a little fragment of plaster, which he was bathing with his tears, and covering with frantic kisses. At first he took no notice of her, and Veronica, astounded at this mystery, was afraid either to withdraw or to go forward and was already on the point herself of falling on her knees in the doorway opposite her husband, when, oh, miracle! he rose without an effort, walked towards her with a steady step, and, catching her in his arms:
“Henceforth,” he said, as he pressed her to his heart and bent his face towards hers, “henceforth, my dearest, we will pray together.”
VII
The conversion of the unbeliever could not long remain a secret. Julius de Baraglioul did not delay a single day before communicating the news to Cardinal André in France, who spread it abroad amongst the conservative party and the higher clergy; while Veronica announced it to Father Anselm, so that it soon reached the ears of the Vatican.
Doubtless Armand-Dubois had been the object of special mercy. It would perhaps be imprudent to affirm that the Virgin had actually appeared to him, but even if he had seen her only in a dream, his cure was still a matter of fact—incontrovertible, demonstrable and assuredly miraculous. Now if perhaps in Anthime’s opinion it was enough that he should have been cured, in the Church’s it was not. A public recantation was demanded of him, which was to be accompanied by a ceremony of unusual splendour.
“What!” said Father Anselm to him a few days later, “in the course of your errors you have propagated heresy by all the means in your power, and now you would elude the duty of allowing Heaven to dispose of you for its own high purposes of instruction and example? How many souls have been turned aside from the true Light by the false glimmers of your misguided science? It lies with you now to bring them back to the fold, and you hesitate? It lies with you? Nay! It is your strict duty. I will not insult you by supposing that you do not feel it.”