"Let my Damoiselle pardon me. Not I."
"Oh, thou art an old woman, and hast outlived thy youth and its pleasures. No wonder."
"My Damoiselle will find, as life goes on, that the older she grows, the more distasteful that thought becomes to her. That is, unless she should learn to be happy, which may the good God grant!"
I could not help laughing heartily. For a young noble maiden like me, to take lessons of a forlorn old creature like Margot, in the art of being happy, did seem so very ridiculous.
"Ah, my Damoiselle may laugh now," said Marguerite in her quiet way; "but I have told the sober truth."
"Oh dear!" said I. "I think I had better sleep on it.—Margot, art thou not very much pleased at the thought of going to the Holy Land?"
"Ah, yes, my Damoiselle, very much. I would dearly like to behold the earth which the feet of the blessed Lord have trodden,—the lake on which He walked, and the hill from which He went up. Ah! 'He shall so come'—'this same Jesus'!"
I looked at her in astonishment. The worn old face and sunken eyes seemed alight with some hidden rapture. I could not understand her.
"And the Holy Sepulchre!" I said; for that is holiest of all the holy places, as everybody knows.
"Well, I should not so much care to see that," answered Marguerite, to my surprise. "'He is not there; He is risen.' If a dear friend of mine had gone on a journey, I should not make a pet of the saddle on which he rode away. I should rather want not to see it, for it would always remind me that he was gone."