an expanse of water, which still rendered objects in his cell quite
discernible.

In the terrible denunciations and warnings just uttered, he had been
preaching to himself, striving to bring a force on his own soul by which
he might reduce its interior rebellion to submission; but, alas! when
was ever love cast out by fear? He knew not as yet the only remedy
for such sorrow,--that there is a love celestial and divine, of which
earthly love in its purest form is only the sacramental symbol and
emblem, and that this divine love can by God's power so outflood human
affections as to bear the soul above all earthly idols to its only
immortal rest. 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:--