This lasted two or three hours, and it was now near noon. The abbess was scandalized. She resolved to go with the dinner herself, and make them open the door. Girard took some tea: it being Friday, he pretended to be fasting; though he had doubtless armed himself well at Toulon. Cadière asked for coffee. The lay sister who managed the kitchen was surprised at this on such a day. But without that strengthening draught she would have fainted away. It set her up a little, and she kept hold of Girard still. He stayed with her, no longer indeed locked in, till four o’clock, seeking to efface the gloomy impression caused by his conduct in the morning. By dint of lying about friendship and fatherhood, he somewhat reassured the susceptible creature, and calmed her troubled spirits. She showed him the way out, and, walking after him, took, childlike, two or three skips for joy. He said, drily, “Little fool!” * * * * * She paid heavily for her weakness. At nine of that same night she had a dreadful vision, and was heard crying out, “O God! keep off from me! get back!” On the morning of the 8th, at mass she did not stay for the communion, deeming herself, no doubt, unworthy, but made her escape to her own room. Thereon arose much scandal. Yet so greatly was she beloved, that one of the nuns ran after her, and, telling a compassionate falsehood, swore she had beheld Jesus giving her the sacrament with His own hand. Madame Lescot delicately and cleverly wrote a legend out of the mystic ejaculations, the holy sighs, the devout tears, and whatever else burst forth from this shattered heart. Strange to say, these women tenderly conspired to shield a woman. Nothing tells more than this in behalf of poor Cadière and her delightful gifts. Already in one month’s time she had become the child of all. They defended her in everything she did. Innocent though she might be, they saw in her only the victim of the Devil’s attacks. One kind sturdy woman of the people, Matherone, daughter of the Ollioules locksmith, and porteress herself to the convent, on seeing some of Girard’s indecent liberties, said, in spite of them, “No matter: she is a saint.” And when he once talked of taking her from the convent, she cried out, “Take away our Mademoiselle Cadière! I will have an iron door made to keep her from going.” Alarmed at the state of things, and at the use to which it might be turned by the abbess and her monks, Cadière’s brethren who came to her every day, took courage to be beforehand; and in a formal letter written in her name to Girard, reminded him of the revelation given to her on the 25th June regarding the morals of the Observantines. It was time, they said, “to carry out God’s purposes in this matter,” namely, of course, to demand an inquiry, to accuse the accusers.