"No priest should speak to me as you have done," rejoined Jean Jacques.
"What do you know of the reasons for the abstention of madame? The soul
must enjoy rest as well as the body, and madame has a--mind which can
judge for itself. I have a body that is always going, and it gets too
little rest, and that keeps my soul in a flutter too. It must be getting
to mass and getting to confession, and saying aves and doing penance,
it is such a busy little soul of mine; but we are not all alike, and
madame's body goes in a more stately way. I am like a comet, she is like
the sun steady, steady, round and round, with plenty of sleep and the
comfortable darkness. Sometimes madame goes hard; so does the sun in
summer-shines, shines, shines like a furnace. Madame's body goes like
that--at the dairy, in the garden, with the loom, among the fowls,
growing her strawberries, keeping the women at the beating of the flax;
and then again it is all still and idle like the sun on a cloudy day;
and it rests. So it is with the human soul--I am a philosopher--I think
the soul goes hard the same as the body, churning, churning away in the
heat of the sun; and then it gets quiet and goes to sleep in the cloudy
day, when the body is sick of its bouncing, and it has a rest--the soul
has a rest, which is good for it, m'sieu'. I have worked it all out so.
Besides, the soul of madame is her own. I have not made any claim upon
it, and I will not expect you to do more, m'sieu' le cure."

"It is my duty to speak," protested the good priest. "Her soul is God's,
and I am God's vicar--"

Jean Jacques waved a hand. "T'sh, you are not the Pope. You are not even
an abbe. You were only a deacon a few years ago. You did not know how
to hold a baby for the christening when you came to St. Saviour's first.
For the mass, you have some right to speak; it is your duty perhaps; but
the confession, that is another thing; that is the will of every soul to
do or not to do. What do you know of a woman's soul-well, perhaps, you
know what they have told you; but madame's soul--"

"Madame has never been to confession to me," interjected M. Savry
indignantly. Jean Jacques chuckled. He had his New Cure now for sure.

"Confession is for those who have sinned. Is it that you say one must go
to confession, and in order to go to confession it is needful to sin?"

M. Savry shivered with pious indignation. He had a sudden desire to
rend this philosophic Catholic--to put him un