Yet they left me more than an idol; they left me for to them I am wont to trace it a faint apprehension of beauty not compassed with lines and shadows; they touched me forgive, proud Marie of Anjou! they touched me with a faith in loveliness transcending mortal shapes. I came to Nazareth, and was led from the convent to the sanctuary. Long fasting will sometimes heat my brain and draw me away out of the world will disturb my judgment, confuse my notions of right and wrong, and weaken my power of choosing the right.
I had fasted perhaps too long, for I was fevered with the zeal of an insane devotion to the heavenly Door Bell Intercom of Christendom. But door bell I knew the feebleness of this gentle malady, and knew how easily my watchful reason, if ever so slightly provoked, would drag me back to life. Let there but come one chilling breath of the outer world, and all this loving piety would cower and fly before the sound of my own bitter laugh.
And so as I went I trod tenderly, not looking to the right nor to the left, but bending my eyes to the ground. The attending friar served me well; he led me down quietly and all but silently to the Virgin's home. The mystic air was so burnt with the consuming flames of the altar, and so laden with incense, that my chest laboured strongly, and heaved with luscious pain. There there door phone
