But
let us face honestly the consequences they bring. Let us not confuse all
the issues of life and death as we do, by saddling the good and
beautiful Will of God with the ills we make for ourselves.
IX
All untimely bereavement is, of course, not of the nature of the above
illustration. And yet I venture to believe that in all untimely
bereavement some similar explanation could be found. For example, in the
intervals of writing these lines I have been reading a recent biography
of Madame de Maintenon. In it is a chapter describing the series of
catastrophes which fell on Louis the Fourteenth, and the French kingdom,
within little more than a twelvemonth. His son and heir, his grandson,
the second heir, his great-grandson, the third heir, the second heir's
wife, and still another grandson were all carried off by smallpox. In
the apartments of Madame de Maintenon, his wife, the aged monarch was
counselled to submit to the awful Will of God which saw fit thus to
smite him. What no one perceived was that by crowding round the bed of
each sufferer in turn the survivors courted contagion.
But, there again, it is not much more than a century since this fact
became known to anyone. Easily within living memory is the discovery
that disease is due to bacteria. Our whole system of sanitation is of
recent development, and obtains only among the English and the Americans
even now.
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