"Oh dear!" said I. "I think I had better sleep on it.--Margot, art thou not very much pleased at the thought of going to the Holy Land?"
"Ah, yes, my Damoiselle, very much. I would dearly like to behold the earth which the feet of the blessed Lord have trodden,--the lake on which He walked, and the hill from which He went up. Ah! 'He shall so come'--'this same Jesus'!"
I looked at her in astonishment. The worn old face and sunken eyes seemed alight with some hidden rapture. I could not understand her.
"And the Holy Sepulchre!" I said; for that is holiest of all the holy places, as everybody knows.
"Well, I should not so much care to see that," answered Marguerite, to my surprise. "'He is not there; He is risen.' If a dear friend of mine had gone on a journey, I should not make a pet of the saddle on which he rode away. I should rather want not to see it, for it would always remind me that he was gone."
"Marguerite!" exclaimed I, "dost thou not know that a neuvaine offered at the Holy Sepulchre is of more efficacy than ten offered at any other altar?"
"Will my Damoiselle give me leave to wait till I see it? Of course, if the good God choose to have it so, there is an end of the matter. But I think I would rather be sure. For me, I should like to pray in the Church of the Nativity, to thank Him for coming as a little babe into this weary world: and in the Church of the Ascension, to beg Him to hasten His coming again."
"Ah, the Church of the Ascension!" said I. "There are pillars in that church, nearly close to the wall; and the man who can creep between the wall and the pillar has full remission of all his sins."
"Is that in the holy Evangel?" asked Marguerite; but I could not tell her.
"I fancy there may be some mistake about that," she added. "Of course, if it be in the holy Evangel! But it does not look quite of a piece with what Father Eudes reads. He read one day out of the writing of Monseigneur Saint John, that the blood of Jesus Christ, the blessed Lord, cleansed us from all sin: and another time--I think he said it was from the Evangel of Monseigneur Saint Matthew--he read that if a man did but ask the good God for salvation, it should be given him. Well! I asked, and He gave it me. Could He give me anything more?--or would He be likely to do it because I crept between a wall and a pillar?"