see everything at my ease.

"'There must be an end of this,' Antony was saying--I easily recognised
the man when I saw him drink and heard him swear--'I am tired of playing
this game for you. Hide me away with the Carmelites or I shall make a
row.'

"'And what row can you make that will not bring you to the gallows, you
clumsy fool!' answered John. 'It is very certain that you will not set
foot inside the monastery. I don't want to find myself mixed up in a
criminal trial; for they would discover what you are in an hour or two.'

"'And why, I should like to know? You make them all believe that you
are a saint!'

"'Because I know how to behave like a saint; whereas you--you behave
like a fool. Why, you can't stop swearing for an hour, and you would be
breaking all the mugs after dinner!'

"'I say, Nepomucene,' rejoined the other, 'do you fancy that you would
get off scot-free if I were caught and tried?'

"'Why not?' answered the Trappist. 'I had no hand in your folly, nor
did I advise anything of this kind.'

"'Ha! ha! my fine apostle!' cried Antony, throwing himself back in his
chair in a fit of laughter. 'You are glad enough about it, now that it
is done. You were always a coward; and had it not been for me you would
never have thought of anything better than getting yourself made a
Trappist, to ape devotion and afterward get absolution for the past,
so as to have a right to draw a little money from the "Headbreakers"
of Sainte-Severe. By Jove! a mighty fine ambition, to give up the ghost
under a monk's cowl after leading a pretty poor life and only tasting
half its sweets, let alone hiding like a mole! Come, now; when they have
hung my pretty Bernard, and the lovely Edmonde is dead, and when the
old neck-breaker has given back his big bones to the earth; when we have
inherited all that pretty fortune yonder; you will own that we have done
a capital stroke of business--three at a blow! It would cost me rather
too much to play the saint, seeing that convent ways are not quite my
ways, and that I don't know how to wear the habit; so I shall throw
the cowl to the winds, and content myself with building a chapel at
Roche-Mauprat and taking the sacrament four times a year.'

"'Everything you have done in this matter is stupid and infamous.'

"'Bless my soul! Don't talk of infamy, my sweet brother, or I shall
make you swallow this bottle whole.'

"'I say that it is a piece of folly, and if it succeeds you ought