"Belasez, dear maid, He said one other thing. `Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' Trust me, the surest way to find out who He is, is to come to Him." "What meanest thou? He is not on earth." "He is where thy need is," answered Doucebelle gently. "In any labyrinth out of which we know not the way,--over any grave where our hearts lie buried,--we can meet Him." "But how? Thy words are a riddle to me." "Call Him, and see if He do not come to thee. And if He and thou do but meet, it does not much matter by which track thou earnest thither." Belasez was silent, and seemed to be thinking deeply. "Doucebelle," she said at last, "are there two sorts of Christians? Because thy language is like the Bishop of Lincoln's. All the priests, and other Christians, whom I have heard before, spoke in quite another strain." "There are live Christians, and dead ones. I know not of any third sort." "The dead ones must be fearfully in the majority!" said Belasez: "I mean, if thou and the Bishop are live ones." "That may be true, I am afraid," replied Doucebelle. "It must be the breathing of the Holy One that makes the difference," observed Belasez, very thoughtfully. "For it is written, that Adonai formed man of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the neshama of life; and man became a living soul. Thus He breathed the life into man at first, in the day of the creation of Adam. Surely, in the day when the soul of man becomes alive to the will of the Holy One, He must breathe into him the second time, that he may live." "Belasez, what are your sacred books? You seem to have some." "We gave them to you," was Belasez's reply. "But ye have added to them." "But the Scriptures were given to the Church!" remonstrated Doucebelle with some surprise. "I know not what ye mean by the Church," answered the Jewess. "They were ours,--given to our fathers, revealed to them by the Holy One. We gave them to you,--or ye filched them from us,--I scarcely know which. And ye have added other books, which we cannot recognise." The flash of fervent confidence had died away, and Belasez was once more the reserved, impenetrable Jewish maiden, to whom Gentile Christians were unclean animals, and their doctrines to be mentioned only with scorn and abhorrence. And as Marie came dancing in at that moment, the conversation was not renewed. But it made a great impression upon Doucebelle, who ever afterwards added to her prayers the petition,--"Fair Father, Jesu Christ, teach Belasez to know Thee." ["Bel Pere"--then one of the common epithets used in prayer.] But to every one in general, and to Doucebelle in particular, Belasez seemed shut up closer than ever.