"My husband died suddenly," the young woman went on to say, in answer to my further questions; "and from affluence I found myself at once reduced to poverty. I was stunned by the blow; but my mother took me to the cure; and almost before he had said a word, I felt not only consoled, but satisfied with the lot which God had assigned me." And so indeed she must have been. When I saw her, she was still poor, and earning her bread by the worst of all servitude, the daily and nightly servitude of a crowded inn; but gentle, placid, and smiling, as became one who had seen and been comforted by a saint. She evidently felt that she had been permitted to approach very near to God in the person of God's servant, and every word she uttered was so full of love and confidence in the sainted curé that it increased (if that were possible) my desire to kneel at his tomb, since the happiness of approaching his living person had been denied me. The next morning I set off for Villefranche. It is on the direct line to Paris, and at about an hour's railroad journey from Lyons. When I reached it, I found three omnibuses waiting at the station, and I believe they were all there for the sole purpose of conveying pilgrims to Ars. One of the conductors tried every mode of persuasion--and there are not a few in the vocabulary of a Frenchman--to inveigle me into his omnibus. "I should be at Ars in half an hour, and could return at two, three, four o'clock--in short, at any hour of the night or day that might please me best." It was with some difficulty I resisted the torrent of eloquence he poured out upon me; but, in the first place, I felt that he was promising what he himself would have called "the impossible," since a public conveyance must necessarily regulate its movements by the wishes of the majority of its passengers; and in the next, I had a very strong desire to be alone in body as well as in mind during the few hours that I was to spend at Ars.