Alice of Old Vincennes

								

handwriting--a waft of the flowers of Avignon seemed to rise out of it,
as if by the pressure of his grasp.
A stoop-shouldered, burly man went by, leading a pair of goats, a kid
following. He was making haste excitedly, keeping the goats at a lively
trot.
"Bon jour, Pere Beret," he flung out breezily, and walked rapidly on.
"Ah, ah; his mind is busy with the newly arrived cargo," thought the
old priest, returning the salutation; "his throat aches for the
liquor,--the poor man."
Then he read again the letter's superscription and made a faltering
move, as if to break the seal. His hands trembled violently, his face
looked gray and drawn.
"Come on, you brutes," cried the receding man, jerking the thongs of
skin by which he led the goats.
Father Beret rose and turned into his damp little hut, where the light
was dim on the crucifix hanging opposite the door against the
clay-daubed wall. It was a bare, unsightly, clammy room; a rude bed on
one side, a shelf for table and two or three wooden stools constituting
the furniture, while the uneven puncheons of the floor wabbled and
clattered under the priest's feet.
An unopened letter is always a mysterious thing. We who receive three
or four mails every day, scan each little paper square with a
speculative eye. Most of us know what sweet uncertainty hangs on the
opening of envelopes whose contents may be almost anything except
something important, and what a vague yet delicious thrill comes with
the snip of the paper knife; but if we be in a foreign land and long
years absent from home, then is a letter subtly powerful to move us,
even more before it is opened than after it is read.
It had been many years since a letter from home had come to Father
Beret. The last, before the one now in his hand, had made him ill of
nostalgia, fairly shaking his iron determination never to quit for a
moment his life work as a missionary. Ever since that day he had found
it harder to meet the many and stern demands of a most difficult and
exacting duty. Now the mere touch of the paper in his hand gave him a
sense of returning weakness, dissatisfaction, and longing. The home of
his boyhood, the rushing of the Rhone, a seat in a shady nook of the
garden, Madeline, his sister, prattling beside him, and his mother
singing somewhere about the house--it all came back and went over him
and through him, making his heart sink strangely, while another voice,
the sweetest ever heard--but she was ineffable and her memory a
forbidden fragrance.
Father Beret tottered across the forlorn little room and knelt before
the crucifix holding his clasped hands high, the letter pressed between
them. His lips moved in prayer, but made no sound; his whole frame
shook violently.
It would be unpardonable desecration to enter the chamber of Father
Beret's soul and look upon his sacred and secret trouble; nor must we
even speculate as to its particulars. The good old man writhed and