Arthur Sherburne Hardy

“ Yet whereas the abbé dined at the château only once a week, Dr. Leroux was a frequent visitor. This did not trouble the peace of Madame Leroux. She knew that she was his wife, the mother of his children, the woman who in certain respects was his inferior, but whom he tenderly loved. She knew, also, that the other was the woman who in certain other respects was his superior, who, in the dull monotony of Freyr, was the stimulus to his intellectual nature as she, Madame Leroux, was its rest. ”

“ The truth is that while tolerant of every form of weakness and suffering, the doctor despised every form of pretension. With politics he would have nothing to do, and on all social questions was as conservative as on religious ones he was radical. His speech was often hot and his silence chilling, and with many ideas of the day which, like other ephemeral fashions, penetrated even to Freyr, he was sadly out of joint. "But," said Madame Leroux, "he has the heart of a little lamb"—and Madame Leroux, while adoring her husband, understood him well. ”

“ The mistakes it makes are only the price it pays for the immense privilege of doing good. "
It was a day of early autumn—the grapes still hung between the yellowing leaves of the vines—when Dr. Leroux, his black felt hat pulled down to his shaggy eyebrows, came through the gate of the château path, past the creaking sign of the White Fawn and along the narrow street which led to his own door. If there had been nothing else to mark that day Madame Leroux would have remembered it as one on which her husband had no greeting for her when she looked up at the sound of the opening door. ”

“ AN object dropped from certain windows of the Château de Freyr fell into the Meuse, and from that side, indeed, but for these windows its gray walls were hardly to be distinguished from the cliff which they prolonged. To the south, where the river escaped from the shadow of the cliff into the sunlight of the meadows, the approaches were less abrupt, the lower slopes being covered with vineyards. Still farther around, to the west, a noble wood of chestnut and oak rose in steps to the great wall of the terrace, their topmost branches almost reaching to the terrace level. ”

“ The next day there was a great stillness in Freyr. Every shop was closed. For the bells of Our Lady of Mercy were tolling in the great square.
Dr. Leroux walked rarely now in the allée by the Meuse. When his work was done he loved rather to sit with Madame Leroux under the garden trellis or before the fire, his hand in hers. But she never knew what sun had shone upon the heart of the Countess Anne. ”

“ And Madame Leroux, who endeavored to atone for her husband's delinquencies, crossed herself, saying, "God only was capable of such a miracle."
Of the two men most people would have selected the abbé rather than the doctor for the friendship of the Countess Anne. For the abbé, though poor, was of noble family, having in his face and manners those signs of race which circumstances can never wholly efface or disguise, and which often contrasted strongly with the brusque, even bourgeois ways of the doctor. ”

“ And then the abbé would remain silent, or perhaps, on the way home, just before parting, would say in an impersonal way:
"Charity does not discriminate. Organize charity, ask of it judgment, reason, and it is no longer charity. Such only creates what it seeks to relieve. There is only one charity, the charity that reaches the heart because it proceeds from the heart, and that charity never hesitates, never reasons—it gives, at the first touch of the hand on the hem of the garment. ”

“ Leroux knocked at the abbé's door, the day being Thursday, the abbé already wore his best soutane—for Thursday was the day on which he dined at the château. Few and blunt words suffice for men. When, therefore, in his usual courtly manner the abbé had offered him a chair, the doctor began at once, without preamble. ”

“ That such a God should one day hold him responsible for the peace of a soul troubled him less than that that soul should one day look at him with reproachful eyes. For the first time in his life he almost wished for such a God, some final Judge to whom he could turn in his doubt, upon whom he could cast the burden of his perplexity. ”