"How beautiful you are! Ah! wonder-working beauty, sacred beauty! Ah! it is not in vain that the Infinite has dwelt in your bosom: your smile is impregnated with it forever. But you no longer wish to smile.... "Comfort me, through pity, since it is written in your anthems. Are you now going to encourage scepticism? If you truly are the consoler of afflicted souls, prove it, for I am full of affliction. Yes, I feel that it is a wretched reasoning: you do what you wish and your auxilliary grace has devolved only on those of good will. I reason too much. It is not thus that one touches the heart of a woman, O woman of women, am I not right? "Yet I would like, before dying, once again to recall this to you: 'Recollect that you have never been implored in vain!' If you have no condescension for my love, have some for my madness. Do you not perceive that I ramble incoherently, and to what point. What would you, it is thus when one loves! "So, we are going to separate.... "Ah! virginal purples! star-like dawns! Ah! early mornings and late tendernesses! Illusive universe, begone, shameful Satan repulsing my caresses! She has smiled! Again, again! She opens her arms to me! Ah! God! is it possible? Yes, I knew it. Ah! of words, nothing is closed to verbal incantations. On what does happiness depend? "She opens her arms to me, she loves me. Here I am, here! How I am going to adore you, how I am going to recite lovely litanies to you, and all the essential orisons. Nothing separated me from you but your will, and your will accepts me, finally cleansed of human defilement by the baptism of blood. Joy more indefinable than the immaculate conception, the virgin of virgins opens to the sinner the ivory portals of pure love...." Dreaming of such things, Guido leaped over the balustrade, precipitantly towards the madonna who awaited him, laughing and with outstretched arms.--_Ave, Rosa speciosa!_ CHAPTER XXXVIII PRIDE "... Voire mesme que si un de nos confraires se monstroit attaché à quelque chose, qu'il en soit aussistost privé...." _Règle de S. Benoist_, ch. xxxviii. When Azélia presented herself the next morning, her face bearing the marks of tears and trouble, for "she was now sure that Madame had been murdered; never had Madame gone away so long without notifying her," Entragues was able to reassure her: "Madame is at Nice, in the Grand Hôtel des Deux-Mondes. She arrived there yesterday evening, is in splendid health and finds that the sea is blue, so blue! And the palms and the flowers! Everything is fragrant. Never before has she felt how sweet life is!" "So Monsieur has received a telegram. Ah! good. But to leave without telling me! If Madame writes, I shall communicate with Monsieur, for Madame loves Monsieur very much." "Yes, we are, as they say, a pair of friends."