She took and kissed the offered crucifix. “Yes, father,” she said meekly. “May the most just, most high, and most amiable will of God be done, praised, and eternally exalted in all things. I had rather die here, O my God! since it is thy blessed will, than in any other place on earth.”
“Amen,” said the priest.
But when the last sacraments had been administered, and Jane lay calm and patient now, waiting her release, the priest drew near to her, and looked with a great reverence upon her face.
“My daughter,” he said “it is at times the will of God to show us even here the use of some part at least of what he has let us do for him. Be sure his Sacred Heart remembers all the rest as well. Sixty years ago this Christmas Eve my father was saved from a great sin, my mother and I from death, by a Christian woman’s love for her Lord. The first confession I ever heard was my own father’s last. He told me that from the time he saw that rich young girl in rags endure the biting cold for God, faith lived in his heart, and would not die. I saw him pass away from earth in penitence and hope. For more than thirty years I have labored among God’s poor as your thank-offering. Madam, my mother by the love of God, God sends you this token that he has worked his own work by means of you all your life long. He sends you this token, because you have given him the thing he most desired of you—your will.”
Jane folded her aged hands humbly. “Not unto us, O Lord!” she said, low and faint, and then a voice as of a son and priest at once spoke clearly, seeing her time had come: “Depart, O Christian soul! in peace.”
THE APOSTOLIC MISSION TO CHILI.
A CHAPTER IN THE LIFE OF PIUS IX.
Before entertaining ourselves with an account of the voyage and journeys, from Genoa to Buenos Ayres and across the continent to Valparaiso, of the first pope who has ever been to America, we shall enter into a few details to show the occasion of the apostolic mission which he accompanied in an official capacity.
The great reverses of Spain at the beginning of the present century, and the consequent weakening of the bonds that united her American colonies to their mother-country, besides some other causes silently working since the emancipation of the thirteen British provinces from England, finally led to a Declaration of Independence, which was established after several years of war. But the king to whose government these New-World possessions had been subject for nearly three hundred years refused to recognize the accomplished fact or to enter into diplomatic relations with rebels against his authority.[213]