left the chamber, while the poor orphan, in fact, lost all remembrance of the sorrows and joys of the day in a profound and beneficent sleep.
The chamber to which Mademoiselle Josephine had taken Fleurange rightfully belonged to the doctor’s niece, now at school in one of the convents at Paris, but which she occupied during her vacation. However, it was far from being vacant the remainder of the year. Mademoiselle Leblanc was one of those persons who are devoted to the searching out of the unfortunate, and the alleviation of their woes. In such cases, he who seeks finds, and that without difficulty, consequently a week seldom passed without offering a good reason for opening the blue chamber for a few days’ shelter to some poor girl out of work and destitute of a home, or to a poor abandoned child, or some one recovering from illness but too feeble to resume work. The doctor heartily approved of this. He would gladly have added to his dwelling a veritable succursale for the accommodation of his poor patients, and if he was not yet rich enough for that, though he reaped the benefit of his skill and celebrity, it was partly because he gave away with one hand what he received in the other, and that with a generosity not always in conformity with prudence. When there was a question of benevolence between the brother and sister, one was not more disposed than the other to count the cost. They had invented a proverb, worthy of the Gospel, which they made use of in reply to the remonstrances of their friends: “He who gives alms, grows rich,” they said; and they continued to enrich themselves in this way by giving themselves up, both of them, to a noble excess of charity. Fortune, in fact, had not been unfavorable
to them, and thus far had remained unfulfilled the sinister prophecies of those who take as a devise quite a different proverb, respecting charity, too well known and too often acted upon in the world. Doctor Leblanc and his sister knew nothing, it is true, of the luxury of elegant quarters and fine equipages. They still lived in a street of the Latin quarter where they were born; an old servant was the sole assistant of the cook; and Mademoiselle Josephine continued to preserve order and neatness around her with her own hands. But at all times they were magnificent in their own way; and the artists they encouraged, the scholars befriended, and the sick gratuitously attended and generously aided, added to the renown of the distinguished physician and gave to his name a reputation he did not seek. Simple and learned, healing the body and respecting the soul, he loved his profession as a mission from heaven, and practised it as a sacred ministry with respect and with love.
II.
When Fleurange opened her eyes on the following morning, it was late, for it was broad daylight and in the month of December. She must have slept very profoundly, for she had not heard any one kindle the fire already blazing in the chimney. Her slumbers must have been such as in youth succeed great fatigue or prolonged efforts to endure anxiety and grief in silence. The fit of weeping the evening before and the long repose of the night had brought double refreshment to the exhausted strength of the young girl, and her first sensation was one of delicious comfort.
But her remembrances soon became more distinct, and the anguish of the first awakening after a great misfortune made her heart sink within her. She had, it is true, known her father but little. The convent where she had been reared was not even in the town where he dwelt, and she saw him but seldom during her childhood. But the days when he appeared at the convent were to both great festivals. It was difficult to understand how a father so glad to see his child could voluntarily have allowed her to grow up away from him. But the time of reunion came at last, and for several weeks they rambled around Italy together. In unveiling all its wonders to a mind naturally capable of appreciating them, the artist felt all the enthusiasm of his youth revive. But it was a flame only rekindled to be extinguished. Soon came symptoms of illness, the sad return to Paris, the fluctuations of disease, which enfeeble the mind as well as the body, and separated the child from her father while he was yet alive, and she night and day at his bedside. His look that gave back no answering glance, the words she murmured in his ear without making him understand, convinced her of her loss before the separation by death which soon followed.
“O father! father scarcely known and so soon lost!” Such was Fleurange’s cry, and perhaps an involuntary reproach mingled with her accents of grief. She did not suspect it was a sublime and paternal instinct that had influenced the poor artist in separating from his child. He wished her to be self-reliant; he wished her to be pious and pure; he wished her rare mental gifts only to be developed when order, an immutable
and divine order, was established in her soul; finally, he desired her to be all that he himself lacked, and God blessed this desire.
In a beautiful spot near Perugia, he found at the head of a charity school one of those women whom the world itself would honor and venerate if it comprehended them. By the world, I mean the mass of light and scoffing people who are hostile to every sentiment in which they have no share, and, above all others, to religious sentiments. Yet this world is, on the whole, suspicious rather than unjust, and incredulous than false: if it sees the semblance of evil, it immediately supposes it real; if it sees the appearance of goodness, it at once imagines this appearance deceitful; but when virtue is unquestionably manifest, irrecusable in its simplicity and truth, and succeeds in being regarded in a true light, the world—even the world of which we have been speaking—generally bows down before it. The thing is rare, it is true, more so than it should be, because the most perfect natures aim not at displaying themselves, but at concealment; and the world to which I refer seeks not to discover, but to deny, their existence.
Madre Maddalena was one of these great hidden souls. No one ever spoke of her, or of her little monastery, intended for the education of poor children, but where a limited number of girls of a more elevated class were also admitted. Like so many other monasteries in Italy, this one was in a poetic and charming situation, but not one of those visible afar off on the lofty summits that command views which ravish the eye and transport the soul—views that kindle a desire in the most indifferent heart to keel before them, and that have inspired Christians to