“This song, now that you are no longer here, tells all that my heart would say to you on this day I long for you, mamma’s birthday. It has become my evening prayer.
“‘Oh! si tu savais, loin de foi,
Combien les heures sont amères,
Pleines d’attristantes chimères,
Et comme désert est le toit,
Va, j’ai beau remplir par l’étude
Et par le travail, tous mes jours,
C’est toi que je cherche toujours
Tout au fond de ma solitude.’”
Then, before I finished my reading, his voice continued the song of the child as he lay there on the point of death. In the hour of death his grave voice had a celestial accent; the simple song went up like a superhuman song, a seraphic song, above men, beyond all things. It penetrated to the bottom of our souls and probed our hearts and brought tears.