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“Certainly I closed them on this night of which I am telling. For I woke up with a start, and almost, you might say, in trepidation, for it seemed to me that someone was moving in the church. My first thought was that some mischievous child had crept in, and was playing pranks with my creche, and to that first I made my way. Beyond the window above it rode the flying moon, and in the rays of it what did I see?

“The figures stood as I had left them. But above the manger, over the shoulders of the Virgin, blazed a rope of light–of diamonds such as I have never seen nor shall see again–all flashing green and blue and fieriest scarlet and piercing white. Of the Three Kings, also each bore a gift, two of them a necklace apiece, and the third a ring. I stood before the miracle, and my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth, and then a figure crept out of the shadows and knelt in the pool of moonlight at my feet. It was Jeanne. She caught at the skirt of my soutane, and broke into sobbing.

“‘My father, let the Blessed One wear them ever, or else help me to give them back!’

“You will now guess, monsieur, on what business I have been visiting England. It is a great country. The old clergyman sat among his azaleas and rhododendrons and listened to all my story. Then he took the box that held his daughter’s jewels, and, emptying it upon the table, chose out one necklace and set it aside. ‘This one,’ said he, ‘shall be sold, my friend, and with the money you shall, after giving this girl a marriage portion, re-adorn your church on Ile Lezan to the greater glory of God!'”

On our way back to his lodging the little Cure halted me before the cottage. Gay curtains hung in the windows, and the veranda had been freshly painted.

“At the end of the month Lucien gets his relief, and then they are to be married,” said the little Cure.