This was very unlike any counsel which Doucebelle had ever before received from a confessor. There was something here of which she could take hold. Not that Father Bruno had suggested a new course of action so much as that he had supplied a new motive power. To do good, to give alms, to be kind to poor and sick people, Doucebelle had been taught already: but the reason for it was either the abstract notion that it was the right thing to do, or that it would help to increase her little heap of human merit.
To all minds, but in particular to an ignorant one, there is an enormous difference between the personal and the impersonal. Tell a child that such a thing must be done because it is right, and the motive power is faint and vague, not unlikely to be overthrown by the first breath of temptation. But let the child understand that to do this thing will please or displease God, and you have supplied a far stronger energising power, in the intelligible reference to the will of a living Person.
Doucebelle felt this—as, more or less, we all do.
“Father,” she said, after a momentary pause, “I want your advice.”
“State thy perplexity, my daughter.”
“I hope, Father, you will not be angry; but a few days ago, when you and the other priests were talking in the ante-chamber about Belasez, the door was open, and we heard every word in the bower.”
“Did Belasez hear what was said?”
“Yes.”
“Ha! What did she say?”
“I asked her, at night, whether what you had said had wounded her. And she said, No: but she thought there was one Christian priest who was like what the Scripture described Christ to be.”