“Dear child!” said the Signora, and pressed the girl’s hand. “You should enter the church at once.”
There was no answer in words, but the eyes spoke in an earnest gaze, half pleading, half inquiring.
“My dear,” her friend pursued hastily, “this is no time for us to talk over such a subject; but if you would like to speak with me, and if I can do anything for you, I shall be very happy, and you can come to me quite freely at any time.”
“I shall come, then, very soon,” the girl replied, and kissed the Signora’s hand.
She had another pleasant incident of the day to tell; for she had been with a Catholic friend to see Monsignor Mermillod, who was visiting Rome, and the celebrated Archbishop of Geneva had spoken some kind words to her, and allowed her to look at his ring, in which was set a relic and an exquisite tiny painted miniature of St. Francis of Sales.
“He spoke to us of the mission
of women,” she said, “and of what power women have for good and evil, and his illustration was from Dante, and Beatrice was woman leading man to Paradise. He spoke so that all my former life seemed to me trivial, and worse than lost. O dear Signora! if all men whom we wish to respect would speak so! But it really seems that to please them, and win an influence over them, to have even their respect, we must be mean. Such a man as Monsignor Mermillod requires our noblest qualities, and encourages us to be true. One doesn’t need to be blatant in order to be kindly noticed by him, nor to boast in order to be appreciated. He is so noble and clear-sighted, and his very atmosphere is charity.”
“Yes, he practises what he preaches,” the Signora replied.
When the visitors were gone, the family had a little quiet talk before separating for the night. The influence of the Signora and of Bianca, falling on minds already prepared to receive it, had been such that they took happiness, and all the delights of their daily life, not as a wine that intoxicates to forgetfulness of duty, but as an incentive to quicken their sense of duty, and a balm to alleviate the pains to come in the future. Every new pleasure that the Heavenly Father’s bounty lavished on them, day after day, was welcomed generously, but with a tender fear. Amid all this constantly-recurring beauty and sacredness they walked as among angels, hushing themselves.
A quiet word touched the key, and found all in tune; as, striking but the rim of a true bell, we hear the chord float softly up from turn to turn. Tacitly the first hesitating motion to separate was abandoned, and they drew nearer together instead,