This great truth rises like a rock amid stormy seas, and
many is the sailor struggling in salt and bitter waters who cannot yet
believe it is to be found. A few saints like Saint Augustin had reached
it,--but through what buffetings, what anguish!
At this moment, however, there was in the heart of the father one of
those collapses which follow the crisis of some mortal struggle. He
leaned on the windowsill, exhausted and helpless.
Suddenly, a kind of illusion of the senses came over him, such as is not
infrequent to sensitive natures in severe crises of mental anguish. He
thought he heard Agnes singing, as he had sometimes heard her when he
had called in his pastoral ministrations at the little garden and paused
awhile outside that he might hear her finish a favorite hymn, which,
like a shy bird, she sang all the more sweetly for thinking herself
alone.
Quite as if they were sung in his ear, and in her very tones, he heard
the words of Saint Bernard, which we have introduced to our reader:--
Jesu dulcis memoria,
Dans vera cordi gaudia:
Sed super mel et omnia
Ejus dulcis praesentia.
"Jesu, spes poenitentibus,
Quam pius es petentibus,
Quam bonus te quaerentibus,
Sed quis invenientibus!"
Soft and sweet and solemn was the illusion, as if some spirit breathed
them with a breath of tenderness over his soul; and he threw himself
with a burst of tears before the crucifix.
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