"For there is much to do yet," he mused. "This one letter to the
Pope will not suffice. I must write to Angela,--to say farewell to
her, poor child!--and give her once more my blessing--and then I
must prepare the way at home--for myself, and also for Manuel." He
sighed again as the vision of his own house in the peaceful old-
world French town far away, floated before his mental sight,--almost
he heard the sweet chiming of the bells in his own Cathedral tower;
which like a pyramid of delicate lace-work, always seemed held up in
the air by some invisible agency to let the shafts of sunlight
glimmer through,--once more he saw the great roses in his garden,
pink and white and cream and yellow, clambering over the walls and
up to the very roof of his picturesque and peaceful home--the white
doves nesting in the warm sun--the ripe apples hanging on the
gnarled boughs, the simple peasantry walking up his garden paths,
coming to him with their little histories of pain and disappointment
and sorrow; which were as great to them as any of the wider miseries
of sufferers more beset with anguish than themselves. He thought of
it all sorrowfully and tenderly,--his habit was ever to think of
others rather than himself,--and he wondered sadly, as he considered
all the bitterness and hardships of the poor human creatures who are
forced into life on this planet,--why life should be made so cruel
and hard for them,--why sudden and unprepared death should snap the
ties of tenderest love--why cruelty and treachery should blight the
hopes of the faithful and the trusting--why human beings should
always be more ready to destroy each other than to help each other--
why, to sum all up, so merciful and divine a Being as Christ came at
all into this world if it were not to make the world happier and
bring it nearer to heaven!
"The ways of the Infinite Ordainment are dark and difficult to
understand," he said.
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