"Let us pray, my child, let us pray together."
Marie smiled.
"Pray, Claude?" said she. "Why do you wish me to pray?"
"To console us, Marie, to obtain pardon for us."
"I have no pardon to ask for, I have no sorrow to be softened. See, I am smiling, I am happy; my heart reproaches me with nothing."
She was silent for a moment, putting aside her locks from her forehead; then she resumed, in a weaker tone:
"I know not how to pray, because I have never had to ask for pardon. The woman who brought me up assured me that the wicked alone went to church to obtain absolution for their crimes. I am a child who never did evil; never have I had need of God. Whenever I wept, my tears flowed copiously down my cheeks and the wind dried them. Do you wish me to pray for you, Claude?" added she, after another period of silence. "You shall clasp my hands and make me repeat the words which they teach to the children in the villages. I will ask God not to make you weep any more!"
Trembling, touched, I prayed for Marie, I prayed for myself. I found in the depths of my being words of supplication and adoration, and I uttered them one by one without moving my lips. I supplicated Heaven to be merciful, to make death easy, to put this child to sleep in her ecstasy, in her ignorance. And, while I prayed, Marie, without seeing that I was addressing God, clung to my neck with greater force, bending over my face.
"Listen, Claude," said she; "I will get up to-morrow, I will put on a white dress and we will leave this house. You will find a little chamber in which we will shut ourselves up all alone. I plainly see that Jacques loves me no more, because I am too weak, too white. You have a kind heart; you will take good care of me and I will live with more happiness, more gayety, than ever before. I am a trifle weary, I have need of a kind brother. Will you be that brother, Claude?"
These words, uttered with languishing tenderness, were horrible in the mouth of the dying girl. She preserved her innocent shamelessness even in the arms of death; she offered herself upon her dying bed as a sister and a sweetheart of ten years of age. I supported her poor body as if its flesh had been sacred, I listened to her ardent and low voice with a holy compassion.