‘No.’
‘Well, so senseless and ungrateful is our natural state that even love for Christ, which would seem as natural and spontaneous a motion of our being as is a child’s love of its mother, is absent from our hearts, before the operation of Grace. But, come, you are a Madeleine, are you not? A Madeleine who cannot love! The Church has ordained that all Christians should bear the name of a saint whom they should imitate in his or her particular virtue. And the virtue particular to Saint Madeleine was that she “loved much.” Forget not your great patron saint in your devotions and she will intercede for you. And in truth when I was young, I was wont to struggle against my love for Him and tried to flee from Him with an eagerness as great as that with which I do now pursue Him. And I think, dear child, ’twill fall out thus with you.’
Madeleine was deeply moved. Mère Agnès’s words, like the tales of a traveller, had stirred in her soul a wanderlust. It felt the lure of the Narrow Way, and was longing to set off on its pilgrimage. For the moment, she did not shrink from “the love of invisible things,” but would actually have welcomed the ghostly, ravishing arms.
‘Oh, tell me, tell me, what I can do to be holy?’ she cried imploringly.
‘You can do nothing, my child, but “watch and pray.” It lies not in us to be holy. Except our soul be watered by Grace, it is as barren as the desert, but be of good cheer, for some day the “desert shall blossom like the rose.” “Watch and pray” and desire, for sin is but the flagging of the desire for holiness. Grace will change your present fluctuating motions towards holiness into an adamant of desire that neither the tools of earth can break nor the chemistry of Hell resolve. Pray without ceasing for Grace, dear child, and I will pray for you too. And if, after a searching examination of your soul, you are sensible of being in the state necessary to the acceptance of the Blessed Sacrament, a mysterious help will be given you of which I cannot speak. Have courage, all things are possible to Grace.’
With tears in her eyes, Madeleine thanked her and bade her good-bye.
As she walked down the rue Saint-Jacques, the tall, delicately wrought gates of the Colleges were slowly clanging behind the little unwilling votaries of Philosophy and Grammar, but the other inhabitants of the neighbourhood were just beginning to enjoy themselves, and all was noise and colour. Old Latin songs, sung perhaps by Abelard and Thomas Aquinas, mingled with the latest ditty of the Pont-Neuf. Here, a half-tipsy theologian was expounding to a harlot the Jesuits’ theory of ‘Probabilism,’ there a tiny page was wrestling with a brawny quean from the Halles aux vins. Bells were pealing from a score of churches; in a dozen different keys viols and lutes and guitars were playing sarabands; hawkers were crying their wares, valets were swearing; and there were scarlet cloaks and green jerkins and yellow hose. And all the time that quiet artist, the evening light of Paris, was softening the colours, flattening the architecture, and giving to the whole scene an aspect remote, classical, unreal.
Down the motley street marched Madeleine with unseeing eyes, a passionate prayer for grace walling up in her heart.
Then she thought of Mère Agnès herself. Her rôle of a wise teacher, exhorting young disciples from suave spiritual heights, seemed to her a particularly pleasant one. Though genuinely humble, she was very grown-up. How delightful to be able to smile in a tender amused way at the confessions of youth, and to call one “dear child” in a deep, soft voice, without being ridiculous!
Ere she had reached the Porte Saint-Jacques she was murmuring over some of Mère Agnès’s words, but it was not Mère Agnès who was saying them, but she herself to Madame de Rambouillet’s granddaughter when grown up. A tender smile hovered on her lips, her eyes alternately twinkled and filled with tears: ‘Courage, dear child, I have experienced it all, I know, I know!’