easure, and she murmured:

"'Oh! Did you really do that-for me? Tell me-all about it!'

"That was the climax; I could not retract what I had said. I made up a
fanciful story; with precise details: I had given the custodian of the
building a hundred francs to be allowed to go about the building by
myself; the shrine was being repaired, but I happened to be there at the
breakfast hour of the workmen and clergy; by removing a small panel, I
had been enabled to seize a small piece of bone (oh! so small), among a
quantity of others (I said a quantity, as I thought of the amount that
the remains of the skeletons of eleven thousand virgins must produce).
Then I went to a goldsmith's and bought a casket worthy of the relic; and
I was not sorry to let her know that the silver box cost me five hundred
francs.

"But she did not think of that; she listened to me, trembling, in an
ecstasy, and whispering: 'How I love you!' she threw herself into my
arms.

"Just note this: I had committed sacrilege for her sake. I had committed
a theft; I had violated a church; I had violated a shrine; violated and
stolen holy relics, and for that she adored me, thought me perfect,
tender, divine. Such is woman, my dear Abbe, every woman.

"For two months I was the most admirable of lovers. In her room, she had
made a kind of magnificent chapel in which to keep this bit of mutton
chop, which, as she thought, had made me commit that divine love-crime,
and she worked up her religious enthusiasm in front of it every morning
and evening. I had asked her to keep the matter secret, for fear, as I
said, that I might be arrested, condemned, and given over to Germany, and
she kept her promise.

"Well, at the beginning of the summer, she was seized with an
irresistible desire to see the scene of my exploit, and she teased her
father so persistently (without telling him her secret reason), that he
took her to Cologne, but without telling me of their trip, according to
his daughter's wish.

"I need not tell you that I had not seen the interior of the cathedral. I
do not know where the tomb (if there be a tomb) of the Eleven Thousand
Virgins is; and then, it appears, it is unapproachable, alas!

"A week afterward, I received ten lines, breaking off our engagement, and
then an explanatory letter from her father, whom she had, somewhat late,
taken into her confidence.

"At the sight of the shrine, she had suddenly seen through my trickery
and my lie, and