" Then as I was going away
sad, but resigned, she sweetened the cup of bitterness by adding: "I am
not sure of it, come whenever you please;" or her adieu was more friendly
than usual, her glance more tender.
"Rest assured that Providence has led me to you," I said. "If I had not
met you, I might have relapsed into the irregular life I was leading
before I knew you. God has sent you as an angel of light to draw me from
the abyss. He has confided a sacred mission to you; who knows, if I
should lose you, whither the sorrow that consumes me might lead me, the
sad experience I have been through, the terrible combat between my youth
and my ennui?"
That thought, sincere enough on my part, had great weight with a woman of
lofty devotion whose soul was as pious as it was ardent. It was probably
the only consideration that induced Madame Pierson to permit me to see
her.
I was preparing to go to see her one day when some one knocked at my door
and I saw Mercanson enter, that priest I had met in the garden on the
occasion of my first visit. He began to make excuses that were as
tiresome as himself for presuming to call on me without having made my
acquaintance; I told him that I knew him very well as the nephew of our
cure, and asked what I could do for him.
He turned uneasily from one side to another with an air of constraint,
searching for phrases and fingering everything on the table before him as
though at a loss what to say.
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