Chapter LXI: Part IV: The Immolation (6)

On another occasion, she was applied to for a rather large sum of money for a very pressing charity. She happened for the moment to have exhausted all her own and her friends’ resources, and knew not where to turn for the necessary sum. Some enterprising person proposed that she should go and beg it at the house of a banker who was giving a grand ball that night, and at which all the wealthy notabilities of the town were to be present. It was quite an unprecedented proceeding, and one that it required the humility and the courage of Amélie to undertake. She hesitated as usual at first, and as usual, seeing that the thing had to be done, and that no one else would do it, she consented. A preliminary step was to obtain the host’s permission. This he at first emphatically refused; and, seeing that it required nearly as much courage on his part to allow his guests to be waylaid as for Amélie to waylay them, it is not much to be wondered at. Courage, however, is catching. Amélie pleaded, and the banker gave way. He opened her list of contributions by a handsome sum, and consented that she should come the same evening and beg the rest at his house. It was a strange episode in the brilliant scene—the pale, dark‐eyed woman, in her homely black gown and neat little black net cap, standing at the door of the ball‐room; and stretching out her little bag to the votaries of pleasure as they passed her: “_Pour les pauvres, mesdames! Pour les pauvres, messieurs!_” The words must have struck in oddly enough through the clanging of the orchestra, and the rustling of silken robes, and the hum of laughter as the merrymakers swept round in the mazes of the dance. But the low, sweet voice of the beggar rose above the music and the din loud enough to reach many hearts that night; no one turned a deaf ear to the suppliant; the gentlemen gave money, or pledged themselves to give it; the women dropped rings and bracelets into the velvet bag that soon overflowed with its own riches; and when all the guests had arrived, and the festivity was at its height, Amélie, after admiring, as she was always ready to do, everything bright and beautiful that was not sinful—the brilliancy of the scene, the bright jewels and the pretty toilets, and the artistic decoration of the rooms—bade good‐night to it all and to her host, and went home with her heart full of love and gratitude towards her kindly fellow‐creatures.

But we should never end if we were to narrate all the acts of charity and zeal that she was never tired of performing. The following, however, are too characteristic to be omitted:

Late one evening, in her rounds through one of those dark centres of misery and crime that are to be found in all big cities, Amélie heard that a mountebank was dying in a neighboring cellar, all alone and in great pain. She made her way to the place at once. The dying man was lying on a heap of a straw, but he was not alone; a bear and a monkey shared his wretched abode; they had enabled the poor mountebank to live, and now they stood by while he was dying, watching his death‐throes in dumb sympathy. Nothing scared by the presence of his strange company, Amélie went up to the man and spoke to him gently of his soul. If he had ever heard of such a thing as an essential part of himself, he seemed to have altogether forgotten it, but he did not repulse her; he let her sit down beside him on the live, fetid straw and try to soothe him in his pains, and instruct him in the intervals, and prepare him to make his peace with God. By the time her part of the task was done, the night was far spent, but there was no time to lose. Amélie went straight to the priest’s house and woke him up. On the road, she told him what he would find on arriving.

The two went in together. Amélie knelt down in the furthest corner of the place and prayed, and the bear and the monkey looked on while the sweet and wondrous mystery between Jesus and the good thief was renewed before their blank, unintelligent eyes. The mountebank made a general confession of his whole life, and received the last sacraments. Then the priest went home, and Amélie remained alone with the dying man, who expired a few hours later with his head resting on her shoulder.

On another occasion, she heard that a woman whose life had been a public scandal in the town was at the point of death. She rose at once to go to her, and, in spite of the remonstrances of those present, she did go. The character of the woman and her associates, and the place where she lived, were indeed enough to deter a less daring spirit than Amélie, but whenever an objection was raised on prudential grounds to her visiting here or there, she would playfully point to her hump, and say:

“With a protector like that, a woman may go anywhere.”

The woman at first repulsed her fiercely and bade her begone, and refused to hear the name of God mentioned; but Amélie held her ground, pleading with all the eloquence at her command—and those who have heard it in moments when her soul was stirred by any great emotion declare that it was little less than sublime. She caressed the wretched creature, calling her by the most endearing names, till at last the obdurate heart was softened, she let Amélie stay and speak to her, and even asked her to come back the next day. “But,” she added, “you’ll find a _monsieur_ at the door, and he’s capable of beating you if you try to come in against his will.”

But Amélie was not likely to be deterred by this. She came the following morning, and found the _monsieur_. He met her with insulting defiance, and dared her to enter, and, on her attempting to do so, he raised his hand and clenched it, with a savage oath threatening to strike her.

“Hit here!” said Amélie, coolly turning her hump to him.

Confounded by the words and the action, the man let his arm drop. Before he had recovered from his surprise, she had passed into the sick room, and he stood silently looking on and listening in wonder to what was going on before him. Amélie left the house unmolested, and returned a few hours later with a priest. The unhappy woman had been a Christian in her youth. She made a general confession in the midst of abundant tears, and died the next day in admirable sentiments of contrition and hope. The example was not lost on her companion; he made a sudden and generous renunciation of his sinful life, and Amélie had to rejoice over the return of two souls instead of one.

As we have said before, her charity was essentially catholic, universal in every sense. She was ready to pity everybody’s troubles, and, with Amélie, to pity meant to help. The poor widow toiling broken‐hearted for her children in the courts and alleys of the big town; the father struggling with adversity in another sphere, trying to educate his sons and marry his daughters and pay the inexorable debt of decency that society exacts from a gentleman; the poor, lone girl battling with poverty, or perhaps writhing in agonized shame at having fallen in the battle; the rich mother weeping over the wanderings of a son; the poor orphan without bread or friends; the rich orphan pursued by designing relations, or in danger of falling into the hands of a worthless husband; high and low, rich and poor alike, all came to Amélie for sympathy and counsel, and no one was ever repulsed. Even those difficulties which are the result of culpable weakness, and which meet generally with small mercy, not to say indulgence, from pious people, found Amélie full of indulgent pity and a ready will to help. An officer on one occasion was drawn inadvertently into contracting a debt of honor which he had no means of paying. In his despair he thought of Amélie, and, half maddened with shame and remorse, he came to her to ask for pity and advice. The sum in question was two thousand francs. Amélie happened to have it at the moment, and, touched by the distress of the man of the world, she gave it to him at once. There was no spirit of criticism, no censoriousness in her piety, no fastidious condemnation of things innocent in themselves, however apt to be dangerous in their abuse. She loved to see young people happy and amused, and would listen with real interest and pleasure to an account of some fête where they had enjoyed themselves after the manner of their age. This simplicity and liberty of spirit enabled her often to take advantage of opportunities for doing good that never would occur to a person whose piety turned in a narrower groove; she was wont to exclaim regretfully against good people for being so overnice in the choice of opportunities, and thus cramping their own power and means of usefulness. With regard to the choice of tools in the same way, she would often deprecate the fastidiousness of certain pious people, urging that, when there was a work to do, an aim to accomplish, an obstacle to overcome, we should take up whatever tools Providence put in our way, not quarrelling with their shape or quality, but doing the best we can with them, profiting by a knave’s villany or a fool’s folly to further a just purpose, or a noble scheme, or a kind action, making, as far as honesty and truth can do it, evil accomplish the work of good.

Faithfully bearing in mind that we may do no evil that good may come of it, Amélie had withal an ingenious gift of turning to good account the evil that was done by others; but she was slow to see the evil, and, when it was forced upon her, she had always more pity than censure for it. Her lamp was always lighted, and she was ever ready to help the foolish ones who go about this world of ours crying out to the wise ones: “Give me of your oil!” For it is not only when the Bridegroom comes that we need to have our lamp lighted, we want it all along the road, for others as well as for ourselves; we must even adapt it to the necessities of the road by changing the color of its light. This we can do by changing the oil. We must use the oil of faith when we want a strong, bright blaze to keep our feet straight amidst the ruts and snares and pools of muddy water that abound at every step; we must burn the oil of hope to frighten away despondency and cheer us when our hearts are heavy and our courage ebbing; but we must be chiefly prodigal of the rich and salutary oil of charity, for the flame it sends out is often more helpful to others than to ourselves. Sometimes, when our lamp is so low that it hardly shows the ground clear under our own feet, it is shedding—thanks to this marvellous oil of charity—a heavenly radiance on the path of those journeying behind us; its flame is luminous as a star and soft as moonlight; people on whom we turn its roseate glow rejoice in it as in sunshine: it softens them, it heals them, it takes the sting out of their worst wounds. The lamp fed with this incomparable oil is, moreover, often brightest when we ourselves are sick at heart, and when it costs us an effort to pour in the oil and set the wick in order. We do not realize it, but we can believe it by recalling the effect of kindness on our own souls in some well‐remembered hour, when it came from one in great sorrow, and who we knew was setting aside her own grief to enter into ours. Let us be brave, then, to hold up our lamp arm‐high to the pilgrims who are toiling foot‐sore and faint up the steep and rugged path of life along with us; its flame soars on to heaven, and shines more brightly before God than the fairest and loveliest of his stars.

We mentioned already that Amélie, on her father’s death, made a vow of personal poverty. She observed this vow with the utmost rigor as far as was consistent with decorum and the absence of anything approaching to a display of holiness—a thing of which she was almost morbidly afraid. Her usual dress was a black woollen gown and a shawl of the same material; her appearance in the street was that of a respectable housekeeper, but no one who saw the outward decency of her attire suspected the sordid poverty that often lay beneath it. She limited herself to a pittance for her clothes, and she would submit to the most painful inconvenience rather than exceed it. Once she gave away her strong boots and a warm winter petticoat to a poor person at the beginning of the winter, and, though the cold set in suddenly with great severity, she bore it rather than replace either of them till her allowance fell due. How her health bore the amount of labor and austerities that she underwent it is difficult to explain without using the word miraculous.

When, under the pious auspices of Monseigneur de Mazenod, the devotion of the Perpetual Adoration was established at Marseilles, Amélie at once had herself enrolled in the confraternity; unable to spare time from her multiform works of mercy during the day, she entrenched upon her nights, and used to spend hours in adoration before the Tabernacle. Fatigue and bodily suffering were no obstacle to the ardor of her soul; her spirit seemed to thrive in proportion as her body wasted. After a day of arduous labor, constantly on her feet, going and coming amongst the poor and the sick, breathing the foul air of hospital wards, and dingy cellars, and garrets, fasting as rigorously as any Carmelite, and grudging her body all but the bare necessaries of life, she was able to pass an entire night on her knees before the Blessed Sacrament, and be apparently none the worse for it. Such wonderful things are those who love God strengthened to do for him. Yet this woman was made of the same flesh and blood as ourselves; she had the same natural shrinkings and antipathies; her body was not made of different clay from ours, or supernaturally fashioned to defy the attacks of the devil and the repugnances of nature, to endure hunger, and pain, and fatigue without feeling them; she had the same temptations to fight against, the same corrupt inclinations to overcome, and the same weapons of defence against her enemies that we have—faith and prayer and the sacraments. What, then, is the difference between us? Only this, she was generous and brave, and we are mean and cowardly. We bargain and hang back, whereas she made no reserves, but strove to serve God with all her heart and all her strength, and he did the rest. He always does it for those who trust him and hearken unconditionally to that hard saying: “Take up thy cross and follow me!” For them he changes all bitter things into sweet, all weakness into strength; for the old Adam that they cast aside he clothes them with the new, thus rendering them invincible against their enemies, and repaying a hundred‐fold, even in this life, the miserable rags that we call sacrifices; he fills the hungry with good things, and in exchange for creatures and the perishable delights which they have renounced for his sake he gives them himself and a foretaste of the bliss of Paradise.

During her solitary vigils before the altar, the thought of the ingratitude of men and their cruel neglect of our Saviour in his Eucharistic prison sank deeply into Amélie’s heart, and filled it with grief and an ardent desire to make some reparation to his outraged love. We have all read the wonderful chapter on Thanksgiving in that wonderful book, _All for Jesus_. Most of us have felt our hearts stirred to sorrowful indignation at the sad picture it reveals of our own unkindness to God, and the tender sensitiveness of the Sacred Heart to our ingratitude, and his meek acceptance of any crumb of thanksgiving that we deign once in a way to throw to him; we have felt our tepid pulses quicken to a momentary impulse of generosity and passionate desire to call after the nine ungrateful lepers, and constrain them to return and thank him; we watch them going their way unmindful, and we cast ourselves in spirit at the feet of Jesus, gazing after them in sad surprise, and we pour out our souls in apologies—so bold does the passing touch of love make the meanest of us in consolations to him for the unkindness of his creatures. Alas! with most of us it ends there. Next time he tries us we follow the nine selfish lepers, and leave him wondering and sorrowing again over our ingratitude. But with Amélie it was different. No inspiration of divine grace ever found her deaf to its voice; her love knew no such things as barren sighs and idle mystic sentimentalities. Her whole heart was stirred by that touching and powerful appeal of Father Faber’s, and she began to consider at once what she could do to respond to it. The idea occurred to her of instituting a community, to be called _Sœurs Réparatrices_, whose mission should be to give thanks and to console our divine Lord for the ingratitude of the world by perpetual adoration before the Tabernacle, and at the same time of getting up a regular service of thanksgiving among the faithful at large, to have short prayers appointed and recommended by the church to their constant use, for the sole and express purpose of thanking God for his countless mercies to us all, but more especially to those among us who never thank him on their own account. Both suggestions were warmly approved of by many pious souls to whom she mentioned them.

In order, however, to carry them out effectively, it was deemed advisable that Amélie should go to Rome and obtain the authorization and blessing of the Holy Father. She had never been to Rome, but it was the desire of her life to go there; it drew her as the magnet draws the needle; Rome, to her filial Catholic heart, was the outer gate of heaven; it held the Father of Christendom, the Vicar of Christ; it held the tombs of the martyrs, its soil was saturated with their blood, all things within its walls were stamped with the seal of Christianity, and told of the wonders that it had wrought. Amélie, glad of the necessity which compelled her to fulfil her long‐cherished desire, set out for the Eternal City. She received the most affectionate welcome from the Holy Father, who had been long acquainted with her by name, and knew the apostolic manner of life she led. With regard to the community which she desired to found, and of which she was to become a member, but not superioress, His Holiness approved of it, but beyond this, of what passed between him and Amélie on the subject, no details have transpired. She said that the Holy Father encouraged her to carry out the design and gave her his blessing on it, and promised her his fatherly countenance and protection; but whether she submitted any rule to him at this period we have not been able to ascertain. As to the scheme of general thanksgiving that she proposed to inaugurate, he gave her abundant blessings on it, and indulgenced several prayers that she submitted to his inspection. Unfortunately, we have not been able to procure a copy of the little book which contained them all; this is the more to be regretted, that some of them were drawn up by Amélie herself and full of the spirit of her own tender piety; they were also preceded by a preface in which she appealed very lovingly to the children of Mary and the members of the Confraternity of the Sacred Heart, and begged their zealous co‐operation in the service of thanksgiving. We may mention, however, that she was in the habit, during the few remaining years of her life, of constantly recommending to her friends the use of the _Gloria Patri_ and the ejaculation _Deo Gratias!_ as having been particularly commended to her devotion by the Holy Father himself.

An incident occurred to Amélie during her stay in Rome which she often narrated as a proof of the extreme need we have of a service of thanksgiving. She went one morning to an audience at the house of a cardinal, and while she was waiting for her turn she got into conversation with the Superior of the Redemptorist Fathers in France. Always on the watch to gain an ally to the cause, she told him the motive of her journey to Rome, and begged that he would use his influence in his own wide sphere to forward its success amongst souls.

“Ah! madame!” exclaimed the Redemptorist, “it was a good thought to try and stir up men’s hearts to a spirit of thanksgiving, for there is nothing more wanted in the world. The story of the nine lepers is going on just the same these eighteen hundred years. I have been forty years a priest, and during that time I have been asked to say Masses for every sort of intention, _but only once_ have I been asked _to say a Mass of thanksgiving_!”

Yes, truly the story of the nine lepers is being enacted now as in the old days when Jesus exclaimed sorrowfully, “Is there no one but this stranger found to return and give thanks?”

But for all her clear‐sighted sensitiveness to the sins and shortcomings of her day, Amélie was full of hope in it; nothing annoyed her more than to see good people lapse into that lugubrious way so common to them of always crying anathema on their age and despairing of it; she used to say that she mistrusted the love and the logic of such; that those who love God and their fellow‐creatures for his sake never despair of them, but work for them, trusting in God’s help and in the ultimate triumph of good over evil; that despair was a sign of stupidity and cowardice. And was she not right? Surely every age has in its ugliness some counterbalancing beauty, some redeeming grace of comeliness, in the tattered raiment that hangs about its ulcers and its nakedness. God never leaves himself at any time without witnesses on the earth, and it is our fault, not his, if we do not see them. There are always bright spots in humanity, and those who cannot discern them should blame their own dull vision, not their fellow‐ men. As poets who have the mystic eye see beauties of hue and color in the material world where common men see nothing but ruin and decay, so do the saints and the saint‐like, with the keen vision of faith and hope, alone penetrate the external darkness and decay of humanity, and discover in the midst of gloom and evil much that is promising and fair; they see elemental wines boiling up in the cauldron of travail and suffering, and they know that their bitterness is salutary and their fire invigorating unto life.

Amélie returned to Marseilles well satisfied with her visit to the Holy City, and resumed her labors with renewed zest. But she had left her heart behind her, and from the day she left Rome she had but one desire, and that was to return and end her days there. Her health had of late grown so feeble that it was more and more a subject of wonder to those who witnessed it how she was able to continue her life of superhuman activity without flagging for a day. Amélie felt, however, that it could not last much longer now. She had frequently expressed in the midst of her busy, active life a longing for a life of contemplation, and in proportion as the end drew near, the yearning for an interval of silence and solitude increased. She was often heard to say to her fellow‐laborers:

“It is time I left off looking after other people’s souls, and attended a little to my own; I feel the want of more prayer, of more time before the Blessed Sacrament; really, I must begin to get ready.”

In the year 1869, she determined to carry this desire into execution, and begin to get ready, as she said, by withdrawing into a more solitary life. Her love for the church had taken a new impetus from her intercourse with the Holy Father; from the first the Denier de S. Pierre counted her among its most zealous promoters, but more so than ever now. An abundant collection which she made just at this time offered a plausible pretext to her for going to Rome, in order to lay it at the feet of Pius IX. So after putting her affairs in order, and bidding good‐by to only her immediate and intimate friends, so as to avoid anything like resistance or a demonstration on the part of the multitude of people to whom she knew her departure would be painful, Amélie took leave of the hospitable old home in the Rue Grignan, and set her face once more toward the Eternal City.

But she had a last work to do for her native town on the road. The splendid military hospital of Marseilles, in which she had taken so deep and active an interest, was served by lay nurses, and both the soldiers and the civil authorities were anxious to have these replaced by Sisters of Charity. Easy as the thing seemed, up to the present all endeavors to effect the substitution had failed. It rested with the government to make the appointment and to grant a certain sum for the maintenance of the community when attached to the hospital, but, owing either to the case not being properly represented, or to the ill‐will of certain officials who put obstacles in the way, every application on the subject had been met by a refusal. The authorities, seeing all else fail them, turned to Amélie. They remembered her success on a former occasion, and requested her to take the affair in hand on arriving in Paris, and get from the minister the desired concession. The mission was repugnant to her, because she foresaw it would involve her having to come forward and put herself in the way of notabilities and magnates; but, as there seemed just a chance of being able to perform a last service to the soldiers, she accepted, and promised to do her best.

She had a military friend in Paris, who, though a practical Catholic, occupied a distinguished position in the service, and was on good terms with its chiefs. This gentleman procured an audience for her of Marshal ——, who was then in the ministry, and the person to whom she was directed to apply in the first instance.

The marshal, who had been made aware of the subject of her visit, received her, according to his custom, in shirt‐sleeves and a towering rage, asked her a dozen questions, one on top of another, without giving her time to edge in a word of protest, wondered very much what she or anybody else meant by interfering with soldiers and their hospitals and the supreme wisdom of the government, of dictating to them what they ought to do; but that was the way with women; women were always meddling with what didn’t concern them; they were the most difficult subjects to govern; for himself, he would rather have the management of ten armies than a village full of women, etc. In fact, his excellency bullied his visitor after the usual manner of his peculiar courtesy, and Amélie was obliged to take her leave after a very brief audience, during which she had been rated like a naughty schoolboy and not allowed to say three sentences in self‐defence. Clearly there was not much to be done in that quarter. Her friend then proposed getting her without further preamble an audience of the emperor. Amélie preserved a grateful recollection of the reception she had met with from his majesty some years before, and the idea of entering his presence again inspired her with less terror than the prospect of a second edition of the marshal; she thought, moreover, that there might be a speedier and better chance of success by applying directly to the emperor than by beating about the bush with his ministers, admitting even that they were not all of the same type as the one she had tried. Amélie accepted the offer, therefore, and, after a shorter delay than any one but a cabinet minister might have been obliged to undergo, she received a letter from the Lord Chamberlain notifying the day and hour when she was to present herself at the Tuileries.

She was shown into the antechamber, where generals, dignitaries of the state, bishops, and other important personages were waiting their turn to enter the imperial presence. His majesty was giving audience to an ambassador when Amélie arrived, and there was rather a long delay before the door opened. When it did, it was not his chamberlain, but the emperor himself who appeared on the threshold; he stood for a moment, and looked deliberately round the room, where he recognized many noble and influential personages, and then, perceiving an elderly lady in a rusty black gown sitting at the furthest end of it, he walked straight up to her, and held out both his hands. “Mademoiselle Lautard,” said his majesty, “I thank you for the honor you do me by this visit; I am sure I have only to mention your name for every one present to admit your right to pass before them.”

There was a general murmur of assent, though it must have puzzled most if not all of the spectators of this strange scene who this poverty‐stricken, humpbacked elderly lady was to be thus greeted by Napoleon III., and handed over their heads to the presence‐chamber. As soon as they were alone, the emperor drew a chair close to his own, and, inviting his visitor to sit down, he said:

“Now, tell me if, over and above the pleasure of seeing you, I am to have that of doing something that can give you pleasure?”

Amélie, in relating the interview to her friend, said that, when she saw his majesty bearing down upon her before the assembled multitude in the antechamber, she felt ready to sink into the ground, and wished herself at Hongkong; but the moment he spoke her terrors vanished, and she had not been two minutes with him before she felt perfectly at her ease, and talked on as fearlessly as if he had been an old friend. She told him her wishes about the hospital, and he promised unconditionally that they should be carried out. For certain formalities, however, it was necessary to refer her to his minister.

“You will call on Marshal ——,” said his majesty; “he is the person to do it.”

“Sire!” exclaimed Amélie, throwing up her hands in dismay, “anything but that; your majesty must really manage it without sending me again to Marshal ——.”

“Ah! you have been to him already,” said the emperor, with a quiet smile; “well, try him again, and this time I warrant you a better reception; he is _bon enfant au fond_, but you must not let him think that you’re afraid of him.”

Thus warned and encouraged, Amélie promised to take her courage in both hands, as the emperor said, and beard the lion once more in his den. Before letting her go, his majesty questioned her minutely about the condition of the hospitals and other charitable institutions at Marseilles, concerning all of which he appeared to be singularly well informed.

The next day, she presented herself at the _ministère_, and was ushered into the marshal’s presence. He had his coat on this time; whether the fact was due to accident, or to a desire to propitiate the lady who had complained of him to his master, history does not say; but, as soon as Amélie entered, his excellency accosted her with: “Well, so you were affronted with me, it seems! What did you say about me to the emperor?”

“Excellency,” replied Amélie, “I told his majesty that I had expected to find a minister of France, but I found instead a man in a passion.”

The marshal grunted a laugh, and told her to sit down and explain her business. She did so, this time with perfect satisfaction to both parties, and they parted the best friends in the world.

This closed her career of usefulness in France; she waited to make the needful arrangements for the departure of the nuns, their reception at Marseilles, etc., and then she started for Rome.

On setting out for the Eternal City, Amélie seemed to have had the presentiment that she had entered on the last stage of her pilgrimage. The sense of her approaching end, which betrayed itself, perhaps unconsciously, in conversing both by word and letter with her most intimate friends, was accompanied by an increase of fervor and a serenity which struck every one who approached her as something almost divine. The project which she had formed of founding and entering a community of _Sœurs Réparatrices_ was still unrealized, but she hoped now to carry it into effect, to make the remainder of her life a perpetual _Deo Gratias_! and to die in the outward livery of the religious state whose spirit her whole life had so faithfully embodied. But God had other designs upon her. Meantime, in the twilight interval of comparative leisure that she had looked forward to so long and enjoyed so thankfully, Amélie did not give up all active work; she prayed more, and lived in greater retirement; but she still gave a fair proportion of each day to her accustomed service of the poor and the sick.

These were troubled days that she had fallen upon in Rome. The sacrilegious hand of parricides had robbed the church of her possessions, and reduced Pius IX. to the nominal sovereignty of the capital of Christendom, as a prelude to making it, what it is now, his prison. Catholic hearts were sad; but, amongst all his children, the Vicar of Christ had no more faithfully sorrowing heart than Amélie’s, none who entered more keenly into his griefs or responded with more filial alacrity to their claim on her sympathy and participation and righteous anger. She beheld the persecutions of God’s church, the hatred and malice of its enemies, the cowardice of those who called themselves its friends, but stood by passive and cold while the crime perpetrated outside Jerusalem eighteen hundred years ago was renewed before their eyes on the body of that church which Christ had died to found; she saw pride and materialism everywhere at work striving to undo his work, to prevent the coming of his kingdom, and to establish the kingdom of sin upon earth; and the sight of all this filled her heart with grief, but not with despair. It was indeed an hour of unexampled grief for Christendom, but it was also an hour for activity, and zeal, and renewed courage; it was a time for each individual member to prove himself, for all to put their hand to the plough that was furrowing the bosom of the church, and to water the travailed soil with fertilizing tears, and, if need be, blood, thus preparing it for the future harvest that was inevitable. For even as God’s enemies of old had stood at the foot of Calvary, and shook their heads at the bleeding victim of their own hate and envy, and bade him come down from the cross, knowing not the dawn of the Resurrection was nigh, when the victim would arise triumphant over death, and compel his murderers to acknowledge that this man must indeed have been the Son of God—so now the enemies of his church had their hour of triumph, and clapped their hands for joy to see the church that he had built upon the Rock, and promised that the gates of hell should not prevail against, tottering and crumbling under the blows of progress and an enlightened civilization and the force of arms. But their triumph was but the hour of the powers of darkness that was not to endure, but would perish at the appointed time before the manifestation of the Sun of Justice.

Still, even faithful hearts quailed before the storm, and were scandalized at the way in which God seemed to forsake his own, not recognizing in this mysterious abandonment another trait of resemblance between his Vicar and the divine Model, who cried out in his dereliction, “Why hast thou forsaken me?”

Amélie was forced to hear and see much that was unutterably painful to hear as a true child of the church; many who called themselves such, and who were glad enough to draw upon her magnificent sacramental treasury, and to praise and serve her in the days of peace, were not stout‐hearted enough to share her tribulations or even to understand them, and stood aloof when they ought to have acted, or remained dumb when they ought to have spoken, or spoke what they had better have left unsaid. But alongside of this indifference or treachery she witnessed a great deal that was beautiful and consoling. Pilgrims were flocking from the four quarters of the globe to lay at the feet of Pius IX. the tribute of their fidelity and abundant offerings, often collected in perilous journeys at great risk and sacrifice. Then there were the Zouaves, _nos chers Zouaves_, as Amélie always called them, presenting a noble example to us all by their heroic devotion to the cause of God, their spirit of immolation, their chivalrous valor in action, and the marvellous purity of their lives. These modern crusaders replaced the suffering soldiers of Marseilles in Amélie’s solicitude during her stay in Rome. She tended them and worked for them indefatigably, and dwelt continually in letters home on the consolation the spectacle of their childlike piety afforded her.

Early in December she wrote to a friend at Marseilles: “Our dear Zouaves have made their entry into Rome. They passed under my windows. They are the flower of the French nation. They are full of that energy which nothing but the spirit of the faith gives. It is beautiful to see them receive Holy Communion before arming themselves. This morning eighteen hundred of them, bent on shedding their blood in the cause of God, marched proudly into the Eternal City with the band playing and colors flying; they reminded one of the Theban legion. I witnessed a touching sight. The Holy Father met them on their way, and they fell on their knees like one man to get his blessing. He blessed them with visible emotion. How could a father not be moved at seeing the devotion of his children? The Flemish and the Bretons are particularly conspicuous; ancient traditions have been preserved amongst them, and have come down from the fathers to the sons. This evening they accompanied His Holiness to the Vatican, where they cheered him with the enthusiasm of Christian hearts. It was impossible to withhold one’s tears as one beheld the venerable Pontiff rest his loving and gentle gaze on all this youth, so devoted to him, and burning to prove their fidelity. In these days, the position of the Zouaves amongst Christian soldiers is a noble one. Oh! if the idle youth of France knew what a happiness it is to serve God, how many families would be happy and blest even in this world as well as the next! I see here numbers of young men who had strayed away from the right path for a time, but who had the grace to return to it, and are now as happy as children, pure as angels, attached to the church and the Vicar of Christ. Their sole ambition is martyrdom; their joy is to look forward to it. Oh! I see here admirable things. Adieu, dear friend. Let us pray always.”

Sinister reports and wild alarms, sometimes the result of malice, sometimes of fear, were constantly starting up in Rome, terrifying the weak, and stimulating the brave to greater vigilance and courage, but keeping every one on the _qui vive_ from day to day. In the midst of the general excitement of expectation or terror, the serene confidence of Pius IX. remained unshaken, like the rock on which it rested. Amélie, who was admitted frequently to the honor and happiness of speaking to the Holy Father, was lost in wonder at it—at the unearthly peace that was visible in his countenance and pervaded every word of his conversation. Shortly before the date of the foregoing letter, she wrote to the same friend:

“The most contradictory stories are current here, but the peace, the calm, the _abandon_ of the Holy Father are indescribable, and go further to inspire confidence than the most sinister conjectures to create terrors. The daughters of Jerusalem followed our Redeemer to Calvary: a sort of filial sentiment holds me in Rome. I cannot go away.... Let us pray! The power of prayer obtains all things.”

Let us pray! This had been the lifelong burthen of her song, and the cry grew louder and more intense as she drew near the close. It was not the shrill cry of those who say, Lord! Lord! but the irrepressible voice of a soul whom the spirit of prayer possessed in the fulness of its availing power, and side by side with whose growth grew the spirit of sacrifice, the thirst for self‐immolation. She clung firmly to hope as the anchor of courage and resignation in the present trials of the church, but the sense of the outrages that God’s glory was enduring in the person of His Vicar increased in her soul to positive anguish. The consideration of her own nothingness and utter inability to lighten the cross that was pressing on the saintly Pontiff, pursued her day and night with the mysterious pain that is born of the love of God.

What a wonderful thing the soul of a saint or even a saintlike human being must be! How one longs to go within the veil and get a glimpse of the life that is lived there! It is so strange to us to see a creature take God’s cause to heart, and pine and suffer about it as we do about our personal cares and sorrows. It sets us wondering what sort of inner life theirs can be, and through what process of grace and correspondence and mysterious training they have grown to that state of mind when the things of God and his eternity are poignant realities, and the things of earth hollow phantoms that have lost the power to charm, or terrify, or touch. We see them hungering after justice as we hunger after bread, pining actually for the accomplishment of God’s will as eagerly as we pine for the success of our puny enterprises and the triumph of our small ambitions; and we are astonished, as it behoves our stupidity and hardness of heart to be, at the incomprehensible character of their faith and love. When life presses heavily upon us, and the cross is bruising our shoulders, and all things are dark and dreary, we catch ourselves occasionally sighing for death. This is about our nearest approach to that homesick yearning expressed in the words of the apostle: “I long to die, to be dissolved, and to be with Christ!” What an altogether different feeling it must be with these saintlike souls when they long for death! They are not impatient of life, or, like tired travellers, angry with the dust and sun of the road, and disgusted with the uncomfortable wayside inn where they put up; they are impatient of heaven and of the vision that makes the bliss and the glory of heaven. Too jealous of their Creator’s rights to rob him even in desire of one year, or day, or hour of their poor service while he sees good to employ them, they are willing to go on toiling through eternity if he wishes it; but they are homesick, they long to see him, they yearn after his possession with a sacred unrest that we who have but little kinship with their spirit cannot understand. They are saddened by their exile and by the sight of sin and of the small harvest their Lord’s glory reaps amidst the great harvest of iniquity that overruns the world. They watch the sea of humanity rolling its waves along time, moaning with conscious agonies of sin, storm‐lashed and terrible, breaking in billows of impotent rage against the Rock of redemption, and dashing headlong past it into the gulf, where it is sucked down into everlasting darkness; and seeing these things as God sees them, and as they affect his interests, they are filled with sorrow, and call out for the end, that this mighty torrent may be stayed. They call out to the stars to rise on the far‐off heights, that loom dim and gloomy through the swirl and vapor of the storm. They would fain hush the winds and the waves, and hasten the advent of the Judge before whose splendor the dark horizon will vanish, and whose glory will outshine the sunrise and fill the universe with joy. It is not their own selfish deliverance or the world’s annihilation that they long for, but its consummation in man’s happiness and the Creator’s glory.

Amélie longed with all the strength of her generous heart to do something for her Lord, to help ever so little towards hastening the coming of his kingdom before he called her away. One morning, after communion, as she was praying very fervently for the Holy Father, whose health just then was a source of great anxiety amongst the faithful, this longing came upon her with an intensity that she had never felt before; she was seized with a sudden impulse to make the sacrifice of her life in exchange for his, and to offer herself as a victim that he might be spared yet awhile to guide and sustain the church through the trials and temptations that were afflicting her. The impulse was so vehement that it was with difficulty she restrained herself from obeying it on the spot; the desire, however, to obtain the blessing of obedience in her sacrifice enabled her to do so. She quietly continued her thanksgiving, and, on leaving the church, went straight to the Vatican. There, kneeling at the feet of the suffering Vicar of Christ, she told him of the desire that had come to her, and begged him to bless it, and to permit her to offer herself up next day at Holy Communion as a victim in his place if it should please God to accept her.

Pius IX. was silent for some moments, while Amélie, with uplifted face and clasped hands, awaited his reply. Then, as if obeying a voice that had spoken to him in the silence, he laid his hand upon her head, and said, with great solemnity: “Go, my daughter, and do as the Spirit of God has prompted you.” He blessed her with emotion, and Amélie left his presence filled with gladness and renewed fervor. She spent the greater part of the day in prayer. In the afternoon she wrote two letters: one of them, of too private a character to be given at length, contained the foregoing account of the morning’s occurrences; the other we transcribe. It is a revelation beyond all comment of the state of her soul as it stood on what she believed to be the threshold of eternity.

SATURDAY, Dec. 15—ROME.

“We still continue in the greatest calm. _Nos chers Zouaves_ have
the courage of lions; they draw their strength from the blood of
the martyrs. Generally speaking, they are pious as angels. You see
them constantly during their free hours slipping off their
knapsack and their arms to go and kneel at the feet of the priest
in the confessional, or to pray at the shrine of the queen of
martyrs; they are truly the children of the church, and—”

Here the letter broke off.

The next morning was Sunday. Amélie repaired, as usual, to early Mass at S. Peter’s. She received Holy Communion, and then, with the Eucharistic Presence warm upon her heart, she offered up her life to him who had been its first and last and only love. The words were hardly cold upon her lips, when she was seized with sudden and violent pain, and fell with a cry to the ground. She was surrounded immediately, and carried home. Priests and religious of both sexes who were in S. Peter’s at the moment, and knew her, filled with alarm and distress, accompanied her to the Strada Ripresa dei Barberi. Medical aid was sent for, but it was soon evident that her illness was beyond the reach of human skill. All that day and the next she continued in agonizing pain, unable to speak or to thank those about her except by a smile or a pressure of the hand. Early on the following morning, Wednesday, she grew calmer, the pain subsided, and Amélie asked for the last sacraments. She received them with sentiments of ecstatic devotion, and for some time remained absorbed in prayer. Her thanksgiving terminated, she took leave tenderly of those friends who surrounded her, and then begged they would begin the prayers for the dying; they did so, and she joined in the responses with a fervor that went to every heart. When they came to those grand and solemn words with which the church speeds her children into the presence of their merciful Judge, “Depart, Christian soul, in the name of the Father who created thee, in the name of the Son who redeemed thee, in the name of the Holy Ghost who sanctified thee,” Amélie bowed her head and died.

The news was conveyed at once to the Vatican. When Pius IX. heard it, he evinced no sudden surprise, but raised his eyes to heaven, and murmured with a smile:

“_Si tosto accetato!_”(273)

The announcement of Amélie’s death was received with universal expressions of dismay and sorrow. It was not only the poor, who had been her chief and most intimate associates in Rome, that mourned her, all classes of society joined in a chorus of heartfelt regret, and proved how well they had appreciated the gentle French sister who had dwelt humbly amongst them doing good. The house where she lay in her beautiful and heroic death‐ sleep was besieged by people from every part of the city; all were anxious to gaze once more upon her face, to touch her hands with crosses and rosaries, to kneel in prayer beside the victim who had offered herself for the sins of the people, and been accepted by him who delighteth not in burnt‐offerings, but in the sacrifice of a contrite heart. To her truly it had been answered: “O woman, great is thy faith: be it done unto thee according to thy word!”

The miraculous circumstances of her death were soon proclaimed. In the minds of those who had known her well they excited no surprise. From all they called out sentiments of admiration and praise. Tears flowed uninterruptedly round the austere court where the virgin tabernacle rested from its labors, but they were tears sweeter than the smiles and laughter of earth; prayers for the dead were suspended by common impulse, and the spectators, exchanging the _De Profundis_ for the _Te Deum_ and the _Magnificat_, broke out into canticles of triumph and hymns of rejoicing.

The Zouaves, her beloved Zouaves, hurried in consternation to the house as soon is the news reached them that the gentle, devoted friend of the soldier was no more; and it was a beautiful and stirring sight to see them sobbing like children beside her, touching her hands with their sword‐ hilts and their rosaries, and swelling in broken but enthusiastic voices the hymns of thanksgiving.