"Once for two years I never touched meat—because I had none."
"Who baptized the child?"
"God—with a shower of rain, while He sat on high on His rainbow throne."
"Oh, you heathen!"
"Why heathen?" asked Therese, bitterly. "God's hand was heavy on me; from the height of bliss I fell into the deepest misery. One day made me a widow and a beggar. I did not deny God, nor cast His gift of life away. I came to this desert, sought God and found Him here. My God requires no sacrifice of song and bell, only a devout heart. I do my penance, not by telling my beads, but by work. Men left me nothing in the world, and I formed a blooming garden from a desert wilderness. All deceived, robbed, and scorned me; the tribunal condemned me, my friends defrauded me, the Church despised me, and yet I did not hate my kind. I am the refuge of the stranger and the destitute; I feed and heal those who come to me for aid, and sleep with open doors winter and summer; I fear no one. Oh, sir, I am no heathen!"
"What sort of rubbish you talk, you chattering woman! I never asked you all that, but I ask you about the man who lives in this hut, whether he is a Christian or a heretic, and why the child is not baptized? It is impossible that you should not know his name."
"Be it so; I will not tell a lie. I know his name, but nothing more. His life may have secrets in it, as mine had: he may have good reasons for hiding himself. But I know him only as a kind good man, and harbor no suspicions of him. Those were 'friends' who took my all from me, noblemen of high station, who left me nothing but my weeping child. I brought up the little child, and when she was my only treasure, my life, my all, I gave her to a man of whom I knew only that he loved her and she loved him. Is not that to have faith in God?"
"Don't talk to me of faith. For such a belief as that, witches in the good old time were brought to the stake and burned, all over the Christian world."
"It is lucky that I possess this island by right of a Turkish firman."
"A Turkish firman!" cried the dean, in astonishment. "And who procured it for you?"