A startling, ill-considered step, betraying some unsoundness in the lady’s mind. Having failed to supplant Girard with Cadière, she now essayed to supplant Cadière with Girard. Abruptly, without the least preface, she stepped forward. She made her decision, like a great lady, who was still agreeable and quite sure of being taken at her word, who would go so far as even to talk of the freedom she enjoyed!
In taking so false a step she started from a true belief that Girard had ceased to care much for Cadière. But she might have guessed that he had other things to perplex him in Toulon. He was disturbed by an affair no longer turning upon a young girl, but on a lady of ripe age, easy circumstances, and good standing; on his wisest penitent, Mdlle. Gravier. Her forty years failed to protect her. He would have no self-governed sheep in his fold. One day, to her surprise and mortification, she found herself pregnant, and loud was her wail thereat.
Taken up with this new adventure, Girard looked but coldly on the abbess’s unforeseen advances. He mistrusted them as a trap laid for him by the Observantines. He resolved to be cautious, saw the abbess, who was already embarrassed by her rash step, and then saw Cadière, but only in the chapel where he confessed her.
The latter was hurt by his want of warmth. In truth his conduct showed strange inconsistencies. He unsettled her with his light, agreeable letters, full of little sportive threats which might have been called lover-like. And yet he never deigned to see her save in public.
In a note written the same evening she revenged herself in a very delicate way. She said that when he granted her absolution, she felt wonderfully dissevered both from herself and from every other creature.
It was just what Girard would have wanted. His plots had fallen into a sad tangle, and Cadière was in the way. Her letter enchanted him: far from being annoyed with her, he enjoined her to keep dissevered. At the same time, he hinted at the need he had for caution. He had received a letter, he said, warning him sharply of her faults. However, as he would set off on the 6th July for Marseilles, he would see her on the road.
She awaited him, but no Girard came. Her agitation was very great. It brought on a sharp fit of her old bodily distemper. She spoke of it to her dear Sister Raimbaud, who would not leave her, who slept with her, against the rules. This was on the night of the 6th July, when the heat in that close oven of Ollioules was most oppressive and condensed. At four or five o’clock, seeing her writhe in sharp suffering, the other “thought she had the colic, and went to fetch some fire from the kitchen.” While she was gone, Cadière tried by one last effort to bring Girard to her side forthwith. Whether with her nails she had re-opened the wounds in her head, or whether she had stuck upon it the sharp iron crown, she somehow made herself all bloody. The pain transfigured her, until her eyes sparkled again.
This lasted not less than two hours. The nuns flocked to see her in this state, and gazed admiringly. They would even have brought their Observantines thither, had Cadière not prevented them.
The abbess would have taken good care to tell Girard nothing, lest he should see her in a plight so touching, so very pitiful. But good Madame Lescot comforted the girl by sending the news to the father. He came, but like a true juggler, instead of going up to her room at once, had himself an ecstatic fit in the chapel, staying there a whole hour on his knees, prostrate before the Holy Sacrament. Going at length upstairs, he found Cadière surrounded by all the nuns. They tell him how for a moment she looked as if she was at mass, how she seemed to open her lips to receive the Host. “Who should know that better than myself?” said the knave. “An angel had told me. I repeated the mass, and gave her the sacrament from Toulon.” They were so upset by the miracle, that one of them was two days ill. Girard then addressed Cadière with unseemly gaiety: “So, so, little glutton! would you rob me of half my share?”
They withdraw respectfully, leaving these two alone. Behold him face to face with his bleeding victim, so pale, so weak, but agitated all the more! Anyone would have been greatly moved. The avowal expressed by her blood, her wounds, rather than spoken words, was likely to reach his heart. It was a humbling sight; but who would not have pitied her? This innocent girl could for one moment yield to nature! In her short unhappy life, a stranger as she was to the charms of sense, the poor young saint could still show one hour of weakness! All he had hitherto enjoyed of her without her knowledge, became mere nought. With her soul, her will, he would now be master of everything.