What if this, too, be some temptation of the Evil One, withdrawing him from the grave thought of eternal things, diverting him from the solemn aims of his mission?
There were snatches, too, of Latin hymns, taught her by the godmother, and only half remembered,—hymns of glorious rhythm, which, as they tripped from her halting tongue, brought a great burden of sacred meanings, and were full of the tenderest associations of her childhood. To these, too, the Doctor was half pained to find himself listening, sometimes at nightfall of a Sunday, with an indulgent ear, and stoutly querying with himself if Satan could fairly lurk in such holy words as
"Dulcis memoria Iesu."
Adèle, as we have said, had accepted the duties of attendance upon the somewhat long sermons of the Doctor and of weekly instructions in the Catechism, with a willing spirit, and had gone through them cheerfully,—not, perhaps, with the grave air of devotion which by education and inheritance belonged to the sweet face of her companion, Rose. Nay, she had sometimes rallied Rose upon the exaggerated seriousness which fastened upon her face whenever the Bible tasks came up. But Adèle, with that strong leaning which exists in every womanly nature toward religious faith of some kind, had grown into a respect for even the weightiest of the Christian gravities around her; not that they became the sources of a new trust, but, through a sympathy that a heart like hers could not resist, they rallied an old childish one into fresh action. The strange, serious worship of those about her was only a new guise—so at least it seemed to her simplicity—in which to approach the same good God whom the godmother with herself had praised with chants that rang once under the dim arches of the old chapel, smoky with incense and glowing with pictures of saints, at Marseilles. And if sometimes, as the shrill treble of Miss Almira smote upon her ear, she craved a better music, and remembered the fragrant cloud rising from the silver censers as something more grateful than the smoke leaking from the joints of the stove-pipe in Ashfield meeting-house, and would have willingly given up Miss Eliza's stately praises of her recitation for one good hug of the godmother,—she yet saw, or thought she saw, the same serene trust that belonged to her in the eyes of good Mistress Onthank, in the kind face of Mrs. Elderkin, and in the calm look of the Doctor when he lifted his voice every night at the parsonage in prayer for "all God's people."
Would it be strange, too, if in the heart of a girl taught as she had been, who had never known a mother's tenderness, there should be some hidden leaning toward those traditions of the Romish faith in which a holy mother appeared as one whose favor was to be supplicated? The worship of the Virgin was, indeed, too salient an object of attack among the heresies which the New England teachers combated, not to inspire a salutary caution in Adèle and entire concealment of any respect she might still feel for the Holy Mary. Nor was it so much a respect that shaped itself tangibly among her religious beliefs as a secret craving for that outpouring of maternal love denied her on earth,—a craving which found a certain repose and tender alleviation in entertaining fond regard for the sainted mother of Christ.
When, therefore, on one occasion, Miss Eliza had found among the toilet treasures of Adèle a little lithographic print of the Virgin, with the Christ's head surrounded by a nimbus of glory, and in her chilling way had sneered at it as a heathen vanity, the poor child had burst into tears, and carried the treasure to her bosom to guard it from sacrilegious touch.
The spinster, rendered watchful, perhaps, by this circumstance, had on another day been still more shocked to find in a corner of the escritoire of Adèle a rosary, and with a very grave face had borne it down for the condemnation of the Doctor.
"Adaly, my child, I trust you do not let this bawble bear any part in your devotions?"
And the Doctor made a movement as if he would have thrown it out of the window.
"No, New Papa!" said Adèle, darting toward him, and snatching it from his hand, with a fire in her eye he had never seen there before,—a welling-up for a moment of the hot Provençal blood in her veins; "de grâce! je vous en prie!" (in ecstatic moments her tongue ran to her own land and took up the echo of her first speech,)—then growing calm, as she held it, and looked into the pitying, wondering eyes of the poor Doctor, said only, "It was my mother's."