“Here, my dear child,” she said, “are the prescriptions of a great physician of souls. When the things of ordinary life have not given us the happiness we expected of them, we must seek for happiness in a higher life. Here is the key of a new world. Read night and morning a chapter of this book; but bring your full attention to bear upon what you read; study the words as you would a foreign language. At the end of a month you will be another man. It is now twenty years that I have read a chapter every day; and my three friends, Messieurs Nicolas, Alain, and Joseph, would no more fail in that practice than they would fail in getting up and going to bed. Do as they do for love of God, for love of me,” she said, with a divine serenity, an august confidence. Godefroid turned over the book and read upon its back in gilt letters, IMITATION OF JESUS CHRIST. The simplicity of this old woman, her youthful candor, her certainty of doing a good deed, confounded the ex-dandy. Madame de la Chanterie’s face wore a rapturous expression, and her attitude was that of a woman who was offering a hundred thousand francs to a merchant on the verge of bankruptcy. “I have used that volume,” she said, “for twenty-six years. God grant its touch may be contagious. Go now and buy me another copy; for this is the hour when persons come here who must not be seen.” Godefroid bowed and went to his room, where he flung the book upon the table, exclaiming,-- “Poor, good woman! Well, so be it!” V. THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS The book, like all books frequently read, opened in a particular place. Godefroid sat down as if to put his ideas in order, for he had gone through more emotion during this one morning than he had often done in the agitated months of his life; but above all, his curiosity was keenly excited. Letting his eyes fall by chance, as people will when their souls are launched in meditation, they rested mechanically on the two open pages of the book; almost unconsciously he read the following heading:-- CHAPTER XII. THE ROYAL WAY OF THE HOLY CROSS He took up the book; a sentence of that noble chapter caught his eye like a flash of light:-- “He has walked before thee, bearing his cross; he died for thee, that thou mightest bear thy cross, and be glad to die upon it. “Go where thou wilt, seek what thou wilt, never canst thou find a nobler, surer path than the royal way of the holy cross. “Dispose and order all things according to thy desires and thine own judgment and still thou shalt find trials to suffer, whether thou wilt or no; and so the cross is there; be it pain of body or pain of mind.