rrible fear, and looking straight into my eyes, she said:

"'Are you sure-that it is genuine?'

"'Absolutely certain.'

"'How can you be so certain?'

"I was trapped; for to say that I had bought it of a man in the streets
would be my destruction. What was I to say? A wild idea struck me, and I
said, in a low, mysterious voice:

"'I stole it for you.'

"She looked at me with astonishment and delight in her large eyes.

"'Oh! You stole it? Where?'

"'In the cathedral; in the very shrine of the Eleven Thousand Virgins.'

"Her heart beat with pleasure, 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 he