“He is lying there,” a peasant woman said to her little daughter, as the Cardinal passed. And the keen, austere blue eyes of the Churchman turned upon the speaker, and he said to her in a kindly tone of rebuke:
“‘Was’ lying there, my daughter. He is now with God. He died a blessed death. May yours and mine be as holy!”
He traversed the vestibule and passed upstairs. The diligent hands of the Little Sisters had already completed the last arrangements. Into the middle of the lofty room, with its consecrated burning candles and massed votive wreaths and crosses, the narrow, white-draped bed had been drawn. At the foot of it stood the altar, with its Crucifix, and its vases of flowers, and burning tapers. The pure frosty night breeze, scented with larch and pine needles, flowed in through the open windows; in the bay of the one that looked south-east stood the black-draped bust, with a great Cross of violets and bay-leaves leaning against its pedestal, and a crown of white lilies on its crape-veiled head.
One of the Little Sisters of the Poor knelt on a prie-Dieu near the bed-foot. There would be a public Lying-in-State upon the morrow, when members of Religious Sodalities would take part in the solemn function; when a guard of honor, drawn from the Army of the Swiss Republic, would be posted to watch the illustrious dead. Meanwhile, the Little Sister, with her fellow-nun to relieve her at intervals, would thus keep watch through the night-hours. His Eminence must know it would be not only a duty but a pleasure to render these sacred duties to the remains of one so good as Monsieur.
Then, as de Moulny turned towards the bed to sprinkle it and its occupant from the little stoup of holy water that stood upon a small stand close by, an oblong patch of whiteness showing relief against its purple cover drew his attention. The meek, good eyes of the Sister had followed the Cardinal’s. They now encountered them.
“It was I who placed it there,” the Sister explained, with a little innocent confusion. “It arrived by the afternoon post. It is a letter from England—M. Dunoisse received one in that handwriting regularly once a year at Noël ... its arrival was Monsieur’s great festival!” She added, as the Cardinal took the letter in his hand: “The good God permitted Monsieur to suffer a terrible bereavement in the death of the dear friend who thus remembered him!” She glanced at the crape-veiled bust in the window-bay, and added: “In August he received the news. At the close of September comes this letter—a message from the dead to the dead.”
The Cardinal’s expression of composed stem gravity did not change as the Sister made her explanation.
“Leave me, my child,” he said to the nun, “and rest until I again summon you. I desire to remain alone awhile by this bed of holy death.”
The Sister withdrew, leaving the Cardinal standing with the letter in his hand by the old white head that rested upon the flower-strewn pillow. A snow-pure veil of unutterable peace had been drawn by the hand of gentle Death over the splendid, powerful brow, the sealed eyes, and the high, clear-cut, aquiline features. The face was wonderfully noble, marvelously grand.
A great prelate, a subtle theologian, a profound scholar, no priest was more deeply read than Cardinal de Moulny in the pages of the Book of Life and Death. Long years of experience among the living, stores of knowledge accumulated beside innumerable deathbeds, had taught him that the deeper you read between the pages of that Book, the less you know that you know.