“Miraculous chapel, Don Frederico. Hold,” pursued the old woman, after some instants of silence, “the only motive why I am not as much pleased here as in the village is, that I cannot follow out my devotions. Yes, Manuel, thy father, who had not been a soldier, thought like me. My poor husband!—he is in heaven—my poor husband was brother of Rosaire of the dawn; Rosaire who went out after midnight to pray for souls. Fatigued with a long day’s work he slept profoundly; and precisely at midnight a brother rang a bell, came to the door, and chanted:
‘Here is then the faithful bell!
It is not she the warnings tell;
Of thy parents ’tis the voice!
The cross’s foot then make thy choice;
Raise thee, my son, so full of zeal,
And prayerful in the chapel kneel.
On thy knees in the holy place,
For parents supplicate God’s grace.’
When thy father heard this chant, he felt no longer fatigue nor need of sleep. In the twinkling of an eye he got up and followed the other brother. It seems to me I yet hear him singing in the distance:
‘The Virgin raised the Sovereign crown,
And meekly laid the sceptre down;
Presenting them to Christ was seen,
Exclaiming—I no more am Queen.
If not held back thy wrath from o’er the human race,
Then is thy crown divine with too just rigor placed.’
Jesus answered her:
‘My mother!
Without thy grace so pure, and thy sweet hallowed prayer,
The thunderbolt had hurled the sinner to despair.’ ”
The children, who love so much to imitate what they see as at all great or remarkable, undertook to sing in a beautiful tone the couplets of the aurora:
“Hark! how the trumpet’s shrill-blast clarion sounds!
The voice of the Angel through Heaven resounds:
Jerusalem! within thy walls,
An infant’s foot triumphant falls;
What was the people’s homage in that hour?
What grand equipments decked the kingly bower?
The all-powerful whom Heaven had sent,
Rode on an ass which men had lent.”
“Don Frederico,” said Maria, after a moment’s silence, “in the world which God has made, is it true that there have been men without faith?”
Stein was mute.