"Let down the steps," observed his master with unruffled sang froid, and quietly waited till it was done before he moved.
He entered the Opera amidst deafening cheers, and sat out the representation as coolly, and to all appearances with as much attention, as if nothing had occurred to disturb him, now and then quietly drawing his handkerchief across the splinter-mark on his forehead, from which the blood was oozing slightly.
Next day a solemn Te Deum was celebrated at the Tuileries. The Empress wished the little prince, then a baby in arms, to be present at the thanksgiving for her own and his father's miraculous preservation. The child was carried into the Salle des Maréchaux, where the court and the Corps Diplomatique were assembled, and immediately put out his hands, clamoring for his father to take him. The Emperor took him in his arms, and the child, looking up at his face, noticed the red mark on the temple.
"Papa bobo!"[29] he lisped, and put up his little hand to touch it.
The hard, sphynx-like face struggled for a moment; but the child's touch had melted the strong man. He clasped him to his heart, and literally shook with sobs.
These details, which were probably never written before, were told to me by one who was present at the attempt the previous night, and at the Te Deum Mass next day.
That night, when we were alone, Mary and I talked over the diabolical crime that had within four and twenty hours shaken the whole country like an earthquake, and over the merciful interposition that had arrested us on our way to what might have been for us, as it was for many, a certain and horrible death. Mary, though she said little on this latter point, was evidently very deeply impressed, and what she did say carried in it a depth of religious emotion that revealed her to me in quite a new light.
It was agreed that she would go to confession next day, and that we were to begin a novena together in thanksgiving for our preservation.
"Mary," I said impulsively, after we had been silent a little while, "why have you such a dislike to go to the sacraments? I can't understand how, believing in them at all, you can be satisfied to approach them so seldom."
"It isn't dislike; it is fear," she answered. "It's precisely because I realize so awfully the power and sanctity of the Blessed Sacrament that I keep away. I believe so intensely in it that, if I went often to holy communion, I should have to divorce from everything, to give up my whole life to preparation and thanksgiving. I know I should. And I don't want to do it. Not yet, at any rate," she added, half-unconsciously, as if speaking to herself.