CHAPTER IX

.*

_*ELAINE FINDS MORE THAN SHE EXPECTED*_*.*

"And when I know not what Thou dost, I'll wait the light above." --DODDRIDGE.

Both Guy and Lady Sybil are in a state of the highest ecstasy, and say that they are abundantly recompensed for all their past disappointments. And this is because they are disappointed just like Amaury, but they bear it in as different a style as possible. I think, if I were they, I should consider I had more right to be troubled of the two, for little Heloise is a strong child enough, and is growing almost pretty: while dear Lady Sybil's baby girl is a little delicate thing, that the wind might blow away. Of course I shall love her far better, just because she is Guy's and Sybil's; and she crept into the warmest corner of my heart when she showed me her eyes--not Lady Sybil's gentle grey, but those lovely flashing dark eyes of Guy's; the most beautiful eyes, I think, that were ever seen.

"Marguerite, is not she charming?" I cried.

"Ah, the little children always are," said the old woman.

(I don't agree with her--little children can be great teases.) But Marguerite had more to say.

"My Damoiselle sees they are yet innocent of actual sin; therefore they are among the best things in God's world. I may be wrong, but I think the good God must have been the loveliest babe ever seen. How I should have liked to be there!--if the holy Mother would have allowed me to hold Him in my arms!"

"Ah, I suppose only the holiest saints would be allowed to touch Him," said I.

"I am not so sure, if my Damoiselle will pardon me. She was no saint, surely, that crept into the Pharisee's house to break the casting-bottle[#] on His feet; yet the hardest word she had from Him was 'Go in peace.' Ah, I thank the good God that His bidding is not, 'Come unto Me, all ye that are holy.' There are few of us would come, if it were! But 'Come unto Me, all ye that are weary'--that takes us all in. For we are all weary some time. The lot of a woman is a weary lot, at the best."

[#] Used to sprinkle perfumes.

"Well, it may be, among the villeins," said I.

"My Damoiselle, I never saw more bitter tears than those of the old Lady de Chatelherault--mother of the Lady de Lusignan--when her fair-haired boy was brought in to her in the bower, with the green weeds in his long bright hair, and the gold broidery of his velvet tunic tarnished by the thick stagnant water. Early that morning he had been dancing by her, with the love-light in his beautiful blue eyes; and now, when the dusk fell, they laid him down at her feet, drowned and dead, with the light gone out of the blue eyes for ever. Ah, I have seen no little sorrow amongst men and women in my seventy years!--but I never saw a woman look, more than she did, as if she had lost the light of life. The villeins have a hard lot, as the good God knows; but all the sorrow of life is not for the villeins--no, no!"

How oddly she puts things! I should never have thought of supposing that the villeins had any sorrow. A certain dull kind of coarse grief, or tired feeling, perhaps, they may have at times, like animals: but sorrow surely is a higher and finer thing, and is reserved for the nobles. As to old Marguerite herself, I never do quite think of her as a villein. She has dwelt with nobles all her life, so to speak, and is not of exactly the same common sort of stuff that they are.

Yesterday afternoon Lady Sybil and I were alone in the bower, and she had the baby in her arms. The little creature is to be made a Christian on Sunday. I asked her what name it was to have. I expected her to say either Marie, which is the Lady Queen's name, or Eustacie, the name of Guy's mother. But she said neither. She answered, "Agnes." And she spoke in that hushed, reverent voice, in which one instinctively utters the names of the beloved dead. I could not think whose it could be. The name has never been in our House, to my knowledge; and I was not aware of it in Lady Sybil's line.

"Dost thou not know whose name it is, Helena?" asked Lady Sybil. I fancy she answered my look.

"No," said I.

"My dear lord has been very good to me," she said. "He made not the least objection. It was my mother's name, Helena."

"Oh!" said I, enlightened. "Lady Sybil, do tell me, can you remember the Lady Queen your mother? How old were you when she died?"

She did not answer me for an instant. When I looked up, I saw tears dropping slowly on the infant's robes.

"When she--died!" There was a moment's pause. "Ay, there are more graves than men dig in the churchyard! When she--_died_,--Helena, I was six years old."

"Then you can remember her?" I said eagerly. "Oh, I wish I could remember mine."

"Ay, memory may be intense bliss," she answered; "or it may be terrible torture. I can remember a fair face bent down over mine, soft, brooding arms folded round me, loving kisses from gentle lips. And then----O Helena, did my lord tell thee she was dead? It was kind of him; for he knows."[#]

[#] I trust it will not be imagined from this that I think lightly of "white lies." Romanists, as a rule, are very lenient towards them.

Lady Sybil was sobbing.

"Then she is not dead?" I said, in a low voice.

"I do not know!" she replied. "No one knows. She is dead to us. Oh, why, why does holy Church permit such terrible things?--What am I saying? May the good Lord pardon me if I speak against Him!--But I cannot understand why it must be. They had been wedded nearly ten years, Helena,--I mean my parents,--when it was discovered that they were within the prohibited degrees. Why cannot dispensations be given when such things occur? They knew nothing of it. Why must they be parted, and she be driven into loneliness and obscurity, and I---- Well, it was done. A decree of holy Church parted them, and she went back to her people. We have never heard another word about her. But those who saw her depart from Jerusalem said she seemed like one whose very heart was broken."

"And she never came back?" I said pityingly.

"Is it much wonder?" answered Lady Sybil, in a low voice, rocking the child gently in her arms. "It would have been much, I think, for the crowned and anointed Queen of Jerusalem to steal into her capital as Damoiselle de Courtenay. But it would have been far more for the wife and mother to come suing to her supplanter for a sight of her own children. No, I cannot wonder that she never, never came back."

I was silent for a little while, then I said--

"Was the Lord King as grieved as she? I cannot understand, if so, why they should not have obtained a dispensation, and have been married over again."

Lady Sybil shook her head, and I saw another tear drop on the baby's robe.

"No, Helena," she said, hardly above a whisper: "I do not think he was. He had the opportunity of allying himself with the Caesars. And there are men to whom a woman is a woman, and one woman is just as good as another, or very nearly so. Do men selling a horse stop to consider whether it will be as happy with the new master as the old? They do not care. And, very often, they cannot understand."

Ay, Amaury is one of that sort.

"And you think--if she be alive--that she will never come?" I asked.

"I hope she might. But I think she will not. Ah, how I have hoped it! Helena, hast thou wondered how it is that nothing short of absolute impossibility will suffer me to depute to another the daily distribution of the dole at the postern gate to those poor women that come for alms? Canst thou not guess that amongst all the faces I look but for one--for the one that might creep in there unrecognised to look on me, and that must never, never go away with a soreness at her heart, saying, 'She was not there!' Every loaf that I give to a stranger, I say, 'Pray for the soul of Agnes of Anjou!' And then, if some day she should creep in among the rest, and I should not know her--ah! but I think I should, if it were only by the mother-hunger in the eyes--but if she should, and hear that, and yet not speak, she will say in her heart, 'Sybil loves me yet.' And if she could only creep one step further,--'_God_ loves me yet!' For He does, Helena. Maybe He has comforted her long ago: but if she should not have found it out, and be still stretching forth numb hands in the darkness--and if I could say it to her! Now thou knowest why I call the babe by her name. I know not where she is, nor indeed if she is on earth. But He knows. And He may let her hear it. If she come to know that I have called my child by her name, she may not feel quite so lost and lonely. I have no other way to say to her,--'I have not forgotten thee; nor has God. I love thee; I would fain help thee. He loves thee and is ready to save thee.' Who can tell?--she _may_ hear."

"Oh dear, this is a bad world!" said I. "Why are people so hard on each other? We are all fellow-sinners, I suppose."

"Ah, Helena!" said Lady Sybil, with a sorrowful smile. "Hast thou not found, dear, that the greater sinner a man is himself, very generally, the harder he will be on other sinners--especially when their sins are of a different type from his own. The holier a man is, the more he hates sin, and yet the more tenderly will he deal with the sinner. For as sin means going away from God, so holiness must mean coming near God. And God is more merciful than men to all who come to Him for mercy."

Lady Judith came in while the last words were being spoken.

"I never can quite tell," said I, "what sin is. Why should some things be sin, and other things not be sin?"

"Go on, Helena," said Lady Judith, turning round with a smile. "Why should so many things be wrong, which I like, and so many things be right, which I do not like?"

"Well, holy Mother, it is something like that," said I, laughing. "Will you please to tell me why?"

"Because, my child, thou hast inherited a sinful nature."

"But I do not like sin--as sin," said I.

"Then temptation has no power over thee. Is it so? Art thou never 'drawn away of thine own lust, and enticed'?"

"Well, I am not perfect," said I. "I suppose nobody expects to be."

"Yet without absolute perfection, Helena, thou canst never enter Heaven."

"O holy Mother!" cried I.

"Where art thou about to get it?" said she.

"I am sure I do not know!" I replied blankly.

"Thou shouldst know, my child," she responded gently. "Think about it."

I cannot guess what she means. I am sure I may think about that for a year, and be no nearer when I have done.

I have had a great pleasure to-day, in the shape of a letter from Monseigneur our father, addressed to Guy, but meant for us all three. He wrote about six months after we set out; and I should hope he has before now received my letter, which I sent off on the first opportunity after our arrival in the Holy City. Every body seems to be well, and Alix has a baby boy, whom she means to call after Monseigneur--Geoffrey. There is no other special news. Level, he says, misses us sorely, and lies at my door with his nose between his paws, as if he were considering what it could all mean. I wonder whether he thinks he comes to any satisfactory solution.

The Lord King, I hear, has been more indisposed for some days past. The Lady Queen is very attentive to him. Lady Isabel and her lord have gone through another tremendous quarrel,--about what I do not know.

Early yesterday morning our sister Eschine's second baby was announced, and in the afternoon the holy Patriarch baptized it by Guy's name. Amaury was in ecstasies with his boy; but alas! in the evening the poor little thing fell into convulsions, and barely lived to see the dawn of another day. Amaury passed from the climax of triumph to the depths of despair. He growled and snarled at every body, and snapped at Eschine in particular, as though he thought she had let her child die on purpose to vex him. That she could be in as much distress as himself, did not seem to occur to him. If anything could have provoked me more than Amaury's unreasonableness, it would have been the calm patience with which Eschine took it. There he stalked about, grumbling and growling.

"Why did you all let the child die?" he wanted to know--as if we could have helped it. "There is not one of you has any sense!"--as if he had! "Alix's boy manages to live. She knows how to treat him. Women are all idiots!" (Alix, apparently, not being a woman.)

Poor Eschine lay still, a few tears now and then making their way down her white cheeks, and meekly begging her lord and master's pardon for what she had not done. When he was gone, she said--I think to anticipate what she saw on the tip of my tongue--

"Thou knowest, Elaine dear, he is not angry with me. Men do set such store by a son. It is only natural he should be very much distressed."

She will persist in making excuses for him.

"Distressed?--well!" said I. "But he does not need to be so silly and angry. Natural!--well, yes,--I think it is natural to Amaury to be an idiot. I always did think so."

"O Lynette! don't, dear!" pleaded Eschine.

I am beginning to think I have been rather unjust to Eschine when I said there was nothing in her; but it has taken a long while to come out. And it seems to come rather in the form of doing and bearing, than of thinking and saying.

But that Amaury is a most profound donkey no mortal man can doubt,--or at any rate, no mortal woman.

I was awfully startled this morning when Marguerite undrew my curtains, and told me that our Lord King Beaudouin had been commanded to God. It seems now that for some time past he has been more ill than any one knew, except the Lady Queen his stepmother. What that wicked Count of Tripoli may have known, of course, I cannot say. But I am sure he has had a hand in the late King's will. The crown is left to the little King, Beaudouin V., and our sweet Sybil is disinherited. What that really means, I suppose, is that the Count is jealous of Guy's influence over his Lady, and imagines that he can sway the child better than the mother.

There are to be various changes in consequence of the Lord King's death. The Lady Queen returns to her own family at Byzantium. I do hope Lady Judith will not go with her; but I am very much afraid she may. Guy talks about retiring to his city of Ascalon, but though I am sure Lady Sybil will submit to his will, I can see she does not want to leave her boy, though I do not believe she distrusts that wicked Tripoli as I do.

I asked Marguerite if she did not feel very angry.

"No," she said quietly. "Is my Damoiselle very angry?"

"Indeed I am," said I.

"Does my Damoiselle know what are the good Lord's purposes for Monseigneur Count Guy? It is more than old Marguerite does."

"Of course not: but I see what has happened."

"And not what will happen? Ah, that is not seeing much."

"But what can happen, to put things right again, Margot?"

"Ha! Do I know, I? No better than Monseigneur Saint Jacob, when his son, Monseigneur Saint Joseph, sent for his little brother, and refused to send the meal until he came. That is so beautiful a history!--and so many times repeated in this world. The poor old father!--he thought all these things were against him. He did not know what the good God was making ready for him. He did not know! And the good God will never be hurried. It is we that are in a hurry, poor children of time,--we want every thing to happen to-day. But He, who has eternity to work in, can afford to let things take their time. My Damoiselle does not know what old Helweh said to me yesterday."

"No. Who is Helweh?" said I.

"She is an Arab woman who serves in the kitchen."

"A Paynim? O Marguerite! What can a Paynim say worth hearing? Or is she a Christian?"

"If to be baptized is to be a Christian, as people always say, then Helweh is a Christian. But if to be a Christian is really to know and follow the Lord Christ--and it seems to me as if the Evangel always meant that--then I do not know. I am afraid Helweh does not understand much about that."

"Oh, if she has been christened, she must be a Christian," said I. "Well, what did she say?"

"She said--'All things come to him who knows how to wait.' It is a Saracen proverb."

"Well, I do not believe it."

"Ah, let my Damoiselle pardon me, but it is true."

"Well!" said I, half laughing, "then I suppose I do not know how to wait."

"I do not think my Damoiselle does," answered Marguerite quietly.

"Wilt thou teach me, Margot?"

"Ha! It takes the good God to teach that."

"I should not think it wanted much teaching."

"Let my Damoiselle bear with her servant. The good God has been teaching it to me for seventy years, and I dare not make so bold as to say I have learned it yet."

"Why, Margot, thou art as quiet, and calm, and patient as a stone."

"Ah! not _here_," she said, laying her hand upon her bosom. "Perhaps here,--and here,"--touching her eyes and lips. "But down there,--no!"

"But for what, or for whom, art thou waiting, Margot?" I asked, rather amused.

"Ha!--it ought to be only whom. But it is too often _what_. We are like the little children, waiting for the father to come home, but thinking more of the toys and bonbons he may bring than of himself. And then there is another thing: before we can learn to wait, we must learn to trust."

"To trust what, Margot?"

"I believe we all trust in something, if my Damoiselle pleases. A great many trust in themselves; and a great many more trust in circumstances,--fate, or chance, or luck,--as they call it. Some few trust in other human creatures; and their waking is often the saddest of all. But it seems as if the one thing we found it hardest to do was to trust the good God. He has to drive us away, often, from every other trust, before we will learn to trust Him. Oh, how we must grieve His heart, when He has done so much for us, and yet we _will not_ trust Him!"

I wonder what she means. I feel as if I should like to know, and could not tell how to begin.

The Lady Queen is gone back to her people. And I am so glad--Lady Judith is not gone with her. I was sadly afraid she would do. But Melisende is gone, and Messire Renaud de Montluc, for whom the Lady Queen trusts to obtain some high position at the Court of the Byzantine Caesar.

I am not at all sorry that Messire Renaud is gone. He made me feel uncomfortable whenever I looked at him. I cannot well express my feeling in words; but he gave me a sensation as if nothing stood on any thing, and every thing was misty and uncertain. I fancy some people like that sort of feeling. I detest it. I like figures (though Amaury says it is a very unladylike taste) because they are so definite and certain. Two and two make four; and they will make four, do what you please with them. No twisting and turning will persuade them to be either three or five. Now I like that--far better than some arts, more interesting in themselves, such as music, painting, or embroidery, of which people say, "Yes, it is very fair,--very good,--but of course it might be better." I like a thing that could not be better. Guy says that is very short-sighted, and argues a want of ambition in me. I do not quite see that. If a thing be the best it can possibly be, why should I want it to be better?

"Oh, but one wants an aim," says Guy; "one must have a mark to shoot at. If I were besieging a castle, and knew beforehand that I could not possibly take it, it would deprive me of all energy and object. There is nothing so devoid of interest as doing something which leads to nothing, and is worth nothing when done."

"Well," I say then, "I think if sieges and wars were done away with, it would be no bad thing. Just think what misery they cause."

But such an outcry comes upon me then! Amaury informs me that he is incomparably astonished at me. Is not war the grandest of all employments? What on earth could the nobles do, if there were no wars? Would I have them till the earth like peasants, or read and write like monks, or sew and dress wounds like women?

And Guy says, good-naturedly,--"Oh, one of Elaine's curious notions. She never thinks like other people."

"But think," I say, "of the suffering which comes from war--the bereft widows and fatherless children, and human pain and sorrow. Does a woman weeping over her husband's corpse think war grand, do you suppose?"

"Stuff!" says Amaury. "Can't she get another?"

(Would he say, if Eschine were to die,--"Never mind, I can get another"? Well, I should not much wonder if he would!)

Once, after a rather keen contest of this sort, I asked old Marguerite if she liked war. I saw her eyes kindle.

"Damoiselle," she said, "my husband followed his Seigneur to the war, and left me ill at home in my cot. He had no power to choose, as my Damoiselle must know. The night fell, and the Seigneur came home with banners flying, and along the village street there were bonfires and rejoicings for a great victory. But my husband did not come. I rose from my sick-bed, and wrapped myself in a sheepskin, and went out to the fatal field. Like a candle in the sunlight, the pain of the heart put out the pain of the body. What I saw that night my Damoiselle will not ask. It were not meet to rehearse in the ears of a young noble lady. I do not know how I bore it, only that I did bear--going from one to another in the moonlight, and turning my lantern on the dead still faces, ever looking for that face which I feared to find. And at last I found him, my Piers, the one love of my young life,--where the fight had been the most terrible, and the dead lay thickest. I knew that he had acquitted himself right well, for his face was to the foe, and the broken shaft of his Seigneur's pennon was still grasped tightly in his hand. Damoiselle, there was no funeral pageant, no table tomb, no herald's cry for him. Strangers' hands buried him where he lay, as they might have buried the Seigneur's horse, if need were. And there were no white weeds and seclusion for me, his young widow, who knelt by my baby's cradle, too miserable for tears. But may be, in those halls where all souls are alike before the King of Kings, the Voice from the Throne said to him, 'Well done!' And the Voice did verily say to me, 'Fear not! Come unto Me, and I will give thee rest.'--Ah, my Damoiselle knows now what her old nurse thinks of war."

Oh, why must there be such things?

"How else could a knight win his spurs?" indignantly demands Amaury.

But surely, the winning of Amaury's spurs is not the only thing of any consequence in the world. Does the good God Himself take no account of widows' tears and orphans' wails, if only the knights win their spurs? Could not some other way be contrived for the spurs, which would leave people alive when it was finished?

"Now, Elaine, don't be such a simpleton!" says Amaury.

So at last, as nobody else (except Marguerite, who is nobody) seems to understand me, I ask Lady Judith what she thinks.

"My child," she says, "'He maketh wars to cease unto the ends of the earth; He breaketh the bow, and snappeth the spear in sunder, and burneth the chariot in the fire.' 'The Father of the age to come, the Prince of Peace!' It is one of His fairest titles. But not till He comes, Helena. Till then, earth will be red with the blood of her sons, and moistened with the tears of her daughters. Let us pray for His coming."

"But holy Mother, that is ages off!" said I.

"Is it?" she made answer. "Has the Lord told thee so much, Helena? Ah! it may be--I know not, but I see nothing else to keep Him--it may be, that if all the earth would come to Him to-day, He would come to us to-morrow."

"Holy Mother, I do not know what you mean by 'coming' to Him!"

"Dear Helena," she said gently, "thou wilt not know, till thou art ready to come."

"But I do not understand that," said I. "How am I to get ready?"

"'If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink.' 'If thou knewest the gift of God, thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given to thee water of life.' Art thou not athirst? and dost thou not know the gift of God, dear maiden? Then ask Him to bestow on thee the thirst, and the knowledge."

I really do not know whether it was right or wrong, but that night, after I had finished my Credo, and Paters, and the holy Angelical Salutation, I ventured to say, in my own words,--"Fair Father, Jesu Christ, give me what Lady Judith and Marguerite talk about." I hope it was not very wicked. I did so tremble! And I do not properly know what this thing is, only that it seems to make them happy; and why should I not be happy too? I suppose the good God will know all about it. And as He appears to be so condescending as to listen to Marguerite, who is but a villein, surely He will hear me, who am noble.

It is so odd that Amaury, who is such a simpleton himself, should be perpetually calling me a simpleton. I do think, the more foolish people are, the more fond they are of exhorting others not to be silly. It is very funny. But this world is a queer place.

"It is, indeed, Lynette," says Guy, with mock gravity, when I make the remark to him. "The queerest place I have been in these thirty years."

As Guy is scarcely twenty-seven, it may be supposed I cannot help laughing.

But there is another queer thing. It does really seem as if villeins--at least some villeins--had genuine feelings, just like us nobles. I have always thought that it was because Marguerite had associated so much with nobles, that she seemed a little different--just as you might impart the rose-scent to a handkerchief, if you shut it in a drawer with rose-leaves. But I know she did not become my mother's nurse until after her husband was dead: so she must have had feelings before that, while she was no better off than any other villein. It is very incomprehensible. And I suppose, too, when one comes to think about it, we are all children of Adam and Eva. How did the difference come, to begin with?

It is very difficult to tell how things began. It is a great deal easier to see how they end. Who would suppose, if men had never found out, that the great river Danube, which rolls into the Black Sea, almost like a sea itself in volume, came from the meltings of the ice and snow upon the hills of Switzerland?

"Ha!" says Marguerite, when I repeat my thoughts to her, "the great God is so rich that He can bring the large things out of the small. We others, we can only bring the small out of the large."

"That sounds like spoiling things," said I.

"Men are very apt to spoil what they touch," she answered. "The good Lord never touches anything that He does not leave more beautiful. Has He not blessed childhood and manhood, by becoming Child and Man? Is not the earth fairer since He dwelt on it? and the little children dearer, since He took them in His arms and blessed them? Ah, He might have cared for me, and felt with me, just as much, if He had never been a Man: but it would not have been the same thing to me. And He knew it. When we love one very much, Damoiselle, we love what he has touched: and if he touch us, ourselves, it sends a delicious thrill through us. The good Lord knew that when He took on Him our nature, with all its sufferings and infirmities,--when He touched us every where--in sorrow, and weariness, and poverty, and hunger, and pain, and death. We can suffer nothing which He has not suffered first,--on which He has not laid His hand, and blessed it for His chosen. Thanks be to His Name! It is like honey sweetening everything. And the things that are bitter and acid want the most sweetening. So the good Lord chose poverty and pain. Ease and riches are sweet of themselves. I have heard Father Eudes read of one or two feasts where He was: He blessed joy as well as sorrow,--perhaps lest we should fancy that there was something holy in pain and poverty in themselves, and something wicked in being comfortable and happy. Some people do think so, after all. But I have heard Father Eudes read a great deal more of funerals than feasts, where the blessed Lord was. He seemed to go where people wanted comforting, much oftener than where they were comfortable. He knew that many more would sorrow than rejoice."

What strange eyes Marguerite has! She can look at nothing, but she sees the good God. And the strangest thing is, that it seems to make her happy. It always makes me miserable. To think of God, when I am bright and joyous, is like dropping a black curtain over the brightness. Why cannot I be like Marguerite? I ought to be a great deal happier than she. There is something wrong, somewhere.

Then of course there must be something holy in poverty--voluntary poverty, that is--or why do monks and nuns take the vow of poverty? I suppose there is nothing holy in simply being poor, like a villein. And if our Lord really were poor, when He was on earth, that must have been voluntary poverty. I said as much to Margot.

"Damoiselle," said she, "every man who follows our Lord must carry his cross. His own cross,--not somebody else's. And that means, I think, the cross which the good God lays on His shoulders. The blessed Christ Himself did not cut His own cross. But we others, we are very fond of cutting our crosses for ourselves, instead of leaving the good God to lay them on us. And we always cut them of the wrong wood. We like them very light and pretty, with plenty of carving and gilding. But when the good Lord makes the crosses, He puts no carving on them; and He often hews out very rough and heavy ones. At least, He does so for the strong. He makes them light, sometimes, for the weak; but there is no gilding--only the pure gold of His own smile, and that is not in the cross itself, but in the sunlight which He sends upon it. But my Damoiselle will find, when men sort out the crosses, the strong walk away with the light ones, and the rough and heavy fall to the weak. The good Lord knows better than that."

"But we don't all carry crosses, Margot," said I; "only religious persons."

Marguerite shook her head decidedly.

"Damoiselle, all that learn of the good Lord must bear the cross. He said so. 'If any man serve Me, let him follow Me'--and again, 'If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.' Father Eudes read them both. My Damoiselle sees--'_any_ man.' That must mean all men."

Well, I cannot understand it I only feel more puzzled than ever. I am sure it would not make me happier to carry a heavy cross. Yet Lady Judith and Marguerite are happy; I can see they are. Religion and good people seem to be full of contradictions. How is one to understand them?

*