Shadows on the Rock Read Online Free PDF Page B

rapidly and cleverly, making
artificial flowers. She had great skill at this and delighted in it, — it was her one recreation.
    “Yes, my dear,” she said, “I am making these for the poor country parishes, where they have so little for the altar.
These are wild roses, such as I used to gather when I was a child at Beauport. Oh, the wild flowers we have in the fields
and prairies about Beauport!”
    When he had applied his ointment and bandaged her foot in fresh linen, the apothecary went off to the hospital medicine
room, in charge of Sister Marie Domenica, whom he was instructing in the elements of pharmacy, and Cécile settled herself on
the floor at Mother Juschereau’s knee. Theirs was an old friendship.
    The Reverend Mother (Jeanne Franc Juschereau de la Ferté was her proud name) held rather advanced views on caring for the
sick. She did not believe in leaving everything to God, and had availed her hospital of Auclair’s skill ever since he first
came to Quebec. Quick to detect a trace of the charlatan in anyone, she felt confidence in Auclair because his pretensions
were so modest. She addressed him familiarly as “Monsieur Euclide,” scolded him for teaching his daughter Latin, and was
keenly interested in his study of Canadian plants. Cécile had been coming to the Hôtel Dieu with her father almost every
week since she was five years old, and Mother Juschereau always found time to talk to her a little; but today was a very
unusual opportunity. The Mother was seldom to be found seated in a chair; when she was not on her knees at her devotions,
she was on her feet, hurrying from one duty to another.
    “It has been a long while since you told me a story, Reverend Mother,” Cécile reminded her.
    Mother Juschereau laughed. She had a deep warmhearted laugh, something left over from her country girlhood. “Perhaps I
have no more to tell you. You must know them all by this time.”
    “But there is no end to the stories about Mother Catherine de Saint–Augustin. I can never hear them all.”
    “True enough, when you speak her name, the stories come. Since I have had to sit here with my sprain, I have been
recalling some of the things she used to tell me herself, when I was not much older than you.”
    While her hands flew among the scraps of colour, Mother Juschereau began somewhat formally:
    “Before she had left her fair Normandy (avant quelle ait quitté sa belle Normandie), while Sister Catherine was a novice
at Bayeux, there lived in the neighbourhood a pécheresse named Marie. She had been a sinner from her early youth and was so
proof against all counsel that she continued her disorders even until an advanced age. Driven out by the good people of the
town, shunned by men and women alike, she fell lower and lower, and at last hid herself in a solitary cave. There she
dragged out her shameful life, destitute and consumed by a loathsome disease. And there she died; without human aid and
without the sacraments of the Church. After such a death her body was thrown into a ditch and buried like that of some
unclean animal.
    “Now, Sister Catherine, though she was so young and had all the duties of her novitiate to perform, always found time to
pray for the souls of the departed, for all who died in that vicinity, whether she had known them in the flesh or not. But
for this abandoned sinner she did not pray, believing, as did everyone else, that she was for ever lost.
    “Twelve years went by, and Sister Catherine had come to Canada and was doing her great work here. One day, while she was
at prayer in this house, a soul from purgatory appeared to her, all pale and suffering, and said:
    “‘Sister Catherine, what misery is mine! You commend to God the souls of all those who die. I am the only one on whom you
have no compassion.’
    “‘And who are you?’ asked our astonished Mother Catherine.
    “‘I am that poor Marie, the sinner, who died in the cave.’
    “‘What,’ exclaimed Mother Catherine,