Page 913 - les-miserables

Mother Crucifixion. No doubt, it is not granted to every one
to die, like Cardinal de Berulle, while saying the holy mass,
and to breathe forth their souls to God, while pronouncing
these words: Hanc igitur oblationem. But without attain-
ing to such happiness, Mother Crucifixion’s death was very
precious. She retained her consciousness to the very last
moment. She spoke to us, then she spoke to the angels. She
gave us her last commands. If you had a little more faith,
and if you could have been in her cell, she would have cured
your leg merely by touching it. She smiled. We felt that she
was regaining her life in God. There was something of para-
dise in that death.’
Fauchelevent thought that it was an orison which she
was finishing.
‘Amen,’ said he.
‘Father Fauvent, what the dead wish must be done.’
The prioress took off several beads of her chaplet. Fau-
chelevent held his peace.
She went on:—
‘I have consulted upon this point many ecclesiastics la-
boring in Our Lord, who occupy themselves in the exercises
of the clerical life, and who bear wonderful fruit.’
‘Reverend Mother, you can hear the knell much better
here than in the garden.’
‘Besides, she is more than a dead woman, she is a saint.’
‘Like yourself, reverend Mother.’
‘She slept in her coffin for twenty years, by express per-
mission of our Holy Father, Pius VII.—‘
‘The one who crowned the Emp—Buonaparte.’

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