“She will!” replied Father Fauchelevent, falling into step, and striving not to flinch again.
“Father Fauvent, the community has been blessed in Mother Crucifixion. No doubt, it is not granted to every one to die, like Cardinal de Bérulle, while saying the holy mass, and to breathe forth their souls to God, while pronouncing these words: Hanc igitur oblationem. But without attaining to such happiness, Mother Crucifixion’s death was very precious. She retained her consciousness to the very last moment. She spoke to us, then she spoke to the angels. She gave us her last commands. If you had a little more faith, and if you could have been in her cell, she would have cured your leg merely by touching it. She smiled. We felt that she was regaining her life in God. There was something of paradise in that death.”
Fauchelevent thought that it was an orison which she was finishing.
“Amen,” said he.
“Father Fauvent, what the dead wish must be done.”
The prioress took off several beads of her chaplet. Fauchelevent held his peace.
She went on:—
“I have consulted upon this point many ecclesiastics laboring in Our Lord, who occupy themselves in the exercises of the clerical life, and who bear wonderful fruit.”
“Reverend Mother, you can hear the knell much better here than in the garden.”
“Besides, she is more than a dead woman, she is a saint.”