She had never had the vice of gluttony, for she had taught
herself, like Elizabeth, to eat whatever was set before her, without
paying great attention to her food. And if it were true that she lived
in error, it was the fault of her dream which had placed her there, the
hope of a beyond, the consolation of what was invisible, and all the
world of enchantment which her ignorance had created and which had made
of her a saint.
The Abbe having dried the lips, folded the bit of cotton in the fourth
white cornet.
At last Monseigneur anointed first the right and then the left palms of
the two little ivory-like hands, lying open upon the sheet, and cleansed
them from their sins with the sign of the cross.
"_Per istam sanctam unctionem, et suam piissimam misericordiam,
indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid per tactum deliquisti_."
And the whole body was purified, being washed from its last spots--those
of the touch the most repugnant of all. Pilfering, fighting, murder,
without counting other sins of the breast, the body, and the feet, which
were also redeemed by this unction. All which burns in the flesh, our
anger, our desires, our unruled passions, the snares and pitfalls into
which we run, and all forbidden joys by which we are tempted.
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