“Yes, the lilies will bloom again,” Aunt Deen loved to repeat, for she attached especial credit to the sayings of Sister Rose Colombe.
This conviction caused her to rush up and downstairs all the more proudly, since she might suppose that her services would be needed. She had a habit of accompanying the innumerable labours to which, without respite, she gave herself, with interjections and exclamations. We could hear her psalmodies as she swept or scoured, for she turned her hand to everything.
“They will bloom again, to the salvation of religion and of France.”
The Abbé did not stop at predictions which re-established monarchs among ourselves. His solicitude extended even over unhappy Poland, and one evening he triumphantly brought in a Roman newspaper, in which was recorded the apparition of the Blessed Andrew Bobola, who informed a monk of the restoration of that kingdom, after a war which would involve all nations.
“At last Poland is saved,” he concluded in a tone of satisfaction.
“Poor Poland, it is high time!” chimed in Aunt Deen, who had compassion upon all unfortunates.
Nevertheless, in order to attain to these miraculous renascences many catastrophes must be endured. Our abbé heroically put the torch to all Europe, and consented to drench it in blood if only the lilies would bloom again at the end.
The ladies enjoyed his vaticinations. His nostrils would expand like sails under a favourable breeze, and his round eyes would bulge with so much ardour that it almost seemed as if they might fall out, all in a flame. He used also to break a lance with the party that admitted the escape of Louis XVII from the prison of the Temple and the authenticity of Naundorff. Mlle Tapinois, especially, preached Naundorffism, which won her many a stinging retort. She almost drew Aunt Deen after her, but one glance from Abbé Heurtevant sufficed to keep her firm in the good cause. Mlle Tapinois invoked Providence, of whom every one knew that she was the right arm, declaring him—it was impossible to say why—hostile to the return of the Count de Chambord. By way of eclipsing her adversary she would state that Jules Favre, the advocate of her Naundorff, had received from him as a token of gratitude the seal of the Bourbons, and happening to have no other one with him on that historic day, he had set the royal seal to the Treaty of Paris after the signature of Count Bismarck, as if he were acting simply as the delegate of his prince. This anecdote having obtained the success of curiosity, in spite of father’s remark, “No Bourbon would have signed such a treaty,” Abbé Heurtevant, broken-hearted at having been interrupted in his predictions by such fiddle-faddles, shrugged his shoulders in token of his incredulity, and from the corner where I was playing with a pack of cards, I heard him murmur,
“When Balaam’s ass spoke, the prophet kept silence.”
I knew the adventure of Balaam from a picture in my Bible. But our abbé came in also for his own, and was recompensed for his brief overthrow. Old M. Hurtin, whose bird of prey profile deceived people as to the obstinacy of his temper, shaken by the stories and asseverations of Mlle Tapinois, began on his part to bring up objections to Monseigneur, for no one failed to give him his title if only to dispute it. He went so far as to reproach him for having no children.