I asked her what was the matter.
"I have come on purpose to tell you. You always gave me good advice, and I never took it. It may be that I wouldn't take it even now; but at least it would relieve my mind to tell you all about it. I have a secret desire which is destroying my whole soul: I go to sleep with it, and I wake up with it."
"What desire can it be?"
"If you but look at my face, you can easily see that it is no sinful affection."
"And yet it must be kept secret?"
"Yes, for I go about day and night with the thought of becoming a Catholic."
I was so startled by this, that in my amazement I knew not what to say to her.
"It is my fixed resolution. The only thing that can give to my soul peace on earth and salvation in heaven is conversion to the Roman Catholic Church."
"How did you come by this resolution? There is no Catholic church in the town where you reside."
"But there is a monastery quite close to it, a sweet, quiet, pleasant place. I am wont to go there when they are not watching me. A mere accident moved me at first. Curiosity led me into the church when I heard the holy chants through the door; but now it is devotion which leads me there. Ah! how much more sublime a place it is than our bald, bare place of worship. Wherever I look I see groups of holy figures who bless and beckon me. And those sublime chants, which seem to come from the angelic chorus of heaven, and ravish my soul away to a world unknown—but oh, how ardently desired! And then the deep silence, which is scarcely broken by the solemn sanctus-bell; and then the form of the priest himself, who, like a supernatural being, speaks before the altar in a language which men may not, but God does, understand. When I come out of such a church it seems to me as if I have been speaking to God."