rtnight. I walked like a
duck. People said to me: "What is the matter with you, Mademoiselle
Veronica? They say you have broken something!" Ah, if they had suspected
what it was.

--What a scandal! Monsieur Fortin!

--He was stronger than I; but I don't give him all the blame. We must be
just. It was my fault too. That is what comes of playing with fire.

--But it seems to me, Veronica, that you displayed a little willingness.

--Ah, Monsieur le Cure, you are scolding me for telling you all this so
plainly. Was it not better for me to act thus, than to let Monsieur Fortin
run right and left and expose himself to all sorts of affronts, as some do?
That man had a temperament of fire. And that temperament must have expended
itself on someone. The business about little Gilquin made me reflect. I
sacrificed myself, and I acted as much in his interests as in the interests
of religion.

--And does not temperament speak in you also, Veronica?

--Ah, that is only told in confession.

--Nevertheless it is fine to rule your passions, to be chaste.

--Ah, yes, as you were saying once when I came in: "Chaste without hope."
All that is rubbish. God has well done all that he has done; I can't get
away from that.

--How can you bring the holy name of God into these abominable things?

--Abominable! that is rubbish again. Monsieur Fortin and I often asked
ourselves what evil that could do to God, when neither of us did any to
other people. Monsieur Fortin used to say to me: "Are we doing evil to our
neighbours, Veronica?" "Not that I know of, Monsieur le Cure." "Are we
causing a scandal?" "Ah, Jesus, no, Monsieur le Cure." "Are we setting a
bad example?" "No, Monsieur le Cure, no." "Are we populating the land with
orphans?" "Oh, as to that, no." "Well then, in what way can we be offending
God?" That was very well said all the same, the more so as his health
depended on it.

--But, replied Marcel, wishing to change the conversation which was verging
upon dangerous ground, have you not told me that you have been in the
service of ecclesiastics for nearly five-and-twenty years. That appears to
me to be very extraordinary for, after all, you are hardly forty.

--Thirty-nine, corrected Veronica, who was past forty-five.

--Reason the more.

--That is true, Monsieur le Cure, but I began early. At fifteen I went to
the Abbe Braqueminet's.

--I was acquainted with a Braqueminet, who was Bishop _in partibus_. A very
worthy prel