etter to pray to the Holy
Virgin.

--Will the Holy Virgin give me what I want to eat?

--Ah, they are all like that. Eating! Eating! They only think of eating! It
appeals that they have said everything when they have said: "Who will give
me to eat?" That is the great argument to excuse the lowest callings, and
work on Sundays. Eating? Eating? Eh, unhappy child, and your soul? You must
not think only of your body, which will be one day eaten by worms. Your
soul also requires to eat.

Marcel interrupted.

--Uncle, I ask you to excuse this young person. She is ignorant of the
duties of a Christian, and it is not her fault. This is a soul to guide.

--I do not say that it is not; I wish then that she may find someone to
guide her.

Thereupon he opened his breviary; but he had not finished the second page
of that potent narcotic before he was sound asleep.

LXXXI.

A LITTLE CONFESSION

"Let us not ask of the tree what
fruit it bears."

CAMILLE LEMONNIER (_Mes Medailles_).

--Monsieur le Cure is a trifle abrupt, said Marcel, bat he has an excellent
heart.

--Yes, he seems to be quickly offended. It is quite different with the old
gentleman who came to see me at the Hospital. There is a good sort of a
man!

--The Chaplain, no doubt.

--No, he is a judge. When I knew it, I was quite alarmed at it. A judge,
that makes one think of the _gendarmes_. I was quite in order, fortunately.
Besides, he is the president of a great Society, which enters everywhere,
and knows what is going on everywhere. Ah, he is a man who frightened me
very much the first time I saw him. But he is as kind as can be.

--You are talking, no doubt, of Monsieur Tibulle, President of the Society
of St. Vincent de Paul, and Judge of the Court at Vic.

--Monsieur Tibulle, that is he. A benevolent man, but who does good only to
people who are religious and honest and right-minded--as he says. As I am
an artiste, the Sister was afraid that he would not trouble himself about
me, but he saw plainly that I was an honest girl.

--What do you mean by honest girl?

She looked at him attentively:

--You know very well, she said.

--But it is not enough to receive the Communion once, by chance, to be
honest.

--Was I not obliged to go to confession before?

--Ah, I can explain it all now. You have been washed from your sins. That
is well, my daughter, but you must not fall into them again.

--Fall where?

--Into your sins.