not a father, or you would alter your theories. Hang it! You can't say I am
enchanted at it, but you must put yourself in a man's place. She is a
child, who leaves school, mark that well, where she was obliged, compelled
to perform her religious duties, and one does not break off in a couple of
days the habits of ten years like that. Give her time to reach it. I reason
with her; hang it, I can't do everything in a day. When she goes from time
to time to Mass, on Sunday, it does not follow that she is becoming
religious. I am a free-thinker, but I am a father also, and what would you
have a father do when two pretty arms take hold of your neck and a sweet
little coaxing voice whispers to you, "Let me go there, my darling papa."
Hang it, one is not made of wood, after all!

--Neither is the Curé made of wood.

--You make one shiver. Can my daughter have anything in common with your
peasants' Curé? I say again that it is purely for diversion that she goes
to Mass. And I understand it. Where can she show her new dress? And what
place is more favourable for this little display than going into and coming
out of church?

--Then the Church is a spectacle like another. There are chants, music,
tapers, perfumes, flowers, the half-light which comes through the coloured
windows.

--Without speaking of the fellows covered with gold-tinsel who repeat in
unknown language the pater-nosters to which no one listens. It is enough to
make one burst with laughing, and, if I had not my cabbages to plant, I
would go myself now and again and entertain myself at these masquerades
which are as good as the theatres at the fair, and to complete the
resemblance, it only costs a couple of sous.