Again he sees the soft dark eyes
of Dolores as they close in death, beautiful as the last glances
of an expiring gazelle. Her dying gaze is fixed on the crucifix in
his hand.
"I will watch over this poor lonely child," murmurs the old man,
as he throws himself on his knees, imploring the protection of the
Virgin Mother mild.
Sitting by the little sufferer, softly speaking the language of her
babyhood, the padre hears word after word, uttered by the girl in
the "patois" of Alta California.
And now he vows himself to a patient vigil over this defenceless
one. Silence, discretion, prudence. He is yet a priest.
He will track out this mysterious guardian.
In a week or so, a normal condition is re-established in conquered
Paris. Though the yellowstone houses are pitted with the scourge
of ball and mitraille, the streets are safe. Humanity's wrecks
are cleared away. Huge, smoking ruins tell of the mad barbarity of
the floods of released criminals. The gashed and torn beauties of
the Bois de Boulogne; battered fortifications, ruined temples of
Justice, Art, and Commerce, and the blood-splashed corridors of
the Madeleine are still eloquent of anarchy.
The reign of blood is over at last, for, in heaps of shattered
humanity, the corses of the last Communists are lying in awful
silence in the desecrated marble wilderness of Pere la Chaise.
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