"In the Church in Prayer"
Original Etching by Mercier
I wrote to Fleur-de-Marie that, whilst I respected her religious exercises, I besought her to watch in her cell and not in the church. This was her reply:
"My dear Father:—I thank you for this fresh proof of your tenderness, but be not alarmed, I am sufficiently strong to perform my duty. Your daughter must be guilty of no weakness. The rule orders it, I must submit. Should it cause me some physical sufferings, how joyfully shall I offer them to God! Adieu, dear father! I cannot say I pray for you, because whenever I pray to Heaven I cannot help remembering you in my prayers. You have been to me on earth what God will be, if I merit it, in heaven. Bless your child, who will be to-morrow the spouse of Heaven.
"Sister Amelie."
This letter, in some measure, reassured me; however I had, also, a vigil to keep. At nightfall I went to a pavilion I had built, near my father's monument, in expiation of this fatal night.
About one o'clock I heard Murphy's voice. He came from the convent in order to inform me that, as I had feared, my unhappy child, spite of her resolution, had not had sufficient strength to accomplish this barbarous custom.
At eight o'clock in the evening Fleur-de-Marie knelt and prayed until midnight, but, overpowered by her emotion and the intense cold, she fainted; two nuns instantly raised her, and bore her to her cell. David was instantly summoned, and Murphy came to me. I hastened to the convent, where the abbess assured me that my daughter's swoon, from which she had recovered, had been caused only by her weakness, but that David feared that my presence might seriously affect her. I feared they were preparing me for something more dreadful, but the superior said: