Another circumstance directly revealed her penetration and her anxiety. One Sunday morning as I was going out of the door of the house with grandfather, she admonished us to come back in time for Mass. She would go with me herself, she said, although she had already heard mass at daybreak, as was her habit. All would have been well if grandfather and I, on our way home, had not met Gallus and Merinos, amiable and thirsty pair, who urged us, in spite of ourselves, to take a morning draught. We need only stay two or three minutes, at most, and we were really early. But at the Café was Martinod, perorating in full vein. All the tables were listening to him, drinking to him, applauding him, surrounding him with an atmosphere of admiration, the smoke of the pipes rising like incense around him. He was describing with picturesque and highly coloured details the approaching era of Nature and Reason, so that every one seemed to be already living, by anticipation, in that glorious time. What festival it would be!--a generous humanity renouncing all divisions of caste, class or race, all frontiers and wars, fraternally sharing all riches of earth! The transfigured orator tore away the evil from the future, and showed the sun of that day like the golden monstrance in a religious procession. It was all so beautiful that we quite forgot about Mass, and when, sated with eloquence, we turned our steps homeward, the hour was long past. At the gate, grandfather, descending from his exalted mood, began to show some anxiety. As for me, I felt not the slightest remorse, being under the shelter of an older responsibility. Still, when I saw, behind the half-closed blind, that shadow that was so easily disquieted about the absent one, I too felt my pride droop, and became conscious that I had done wrong. Mother came down to meet us. We found her on the doorstep, so pale that we could no longer mistake the importance of our defection. Her voice betrayed her anxiety as she asked: “What can have happened?” “Why, nothing at all,” replied grandfather. “Then why did you let the child miss Mass?” “Oh, we forgot how time was passing.” This time grandfather rubbed his nose and excused himself as if he had done wrong. A shadow passed over mother’s eyes. A moment before they had been limpid, and now the light that shone through their humidity pierced my heart. Softened as it was by the mist of tears it can not have been very formidable, there was nothing in it by itself so to affect me, but I have never forgotten its power. It must have been with eyes like these that Confessors of the faith looked upon their torturers. I know that I, too, have seen that divine flame. Young as I was I understood that my mother was shaken by filial respect: yet a more imperious obligation constrained her to speak, and she spoke: