your suppers."

"Will you accompany me, messieurs?" continued the abbess; "I am going to
spend a few minutes in my coffin; it is a fancy I have had a long time."

"You will have plenty of time for that," said the regent; "moreover, you
have not even invented this amusement; for Charles the Fifth, who became
a monk as you became a nun, without exactly knowing why, thought of it
before you."

"Then you will not go with me, monsieur?" said the abbess.

"I," answered the duke, who had not the least sympathy with somber
ideas, "I go to see tombs! I go to hear the De Profundis! No, pardieu!
and the only thing which consoles me for not being able to escape them
some day, is, that I shall neither see the one nor the other."

"Ah, monsieur," answered the abbess, in a scandalized tone, "you do not,
then, believe in the immortality of the soul?"

"I believe that you are raving mad. Confound this abbe, who promises me
a feast, and brings me to a funeral."

"By my faith, monseigneur," said Dubois, "I think I prefer the
extravagance of yesterday; it was more attractive."

The abbess bowed, and made a few steps toward the door. The duke and
Dubois remained staring at each other, uncertain whether to laugh or
cry.

"One word more," said the duke; "are you decided this time, or is it not
some fever which you have caught from your confessor? If it be real, I
have nothing to say; but if it be a fever, I desire that they cure you
of it. I have Morceau and Chirac, whom I pay for attending on me and
mine."

"Monseigneur," answered the abbess, "you forget that I know sufficient
of medicine to undertake my own cure, if I were ill: I can, therefore,
assure you that I am not. I am a Jansenist; that is all."

"Ah," cried the duke, "this is more of Father le Doux's work, that
execrable Benedictine! At least I know a treatment which will cure
him."

"What is that?" asked the abbess.

"The Bastille."

And he went out in a rage, followed by Dubois, who was laughing
heartily.

"You see," said the regent, after a long silence, and when they were
nearing Paris, "I preached with a good grace; it seems it was I who
needed the sermon."

"Well, you are a happy father, that is all; I compliment you on your
younger daughter, Mademoiselle de Chartres. Unluckily your elder
daughter, the Duchesse de Berry--"

"Oh, do not talk of her; she is my ulcer, particularly when I am in a
bad temper."

"Well?"

"I have a great mind to make use of