"There now!" exclaimed Madame Massin, interrupting her cousin. "You
are going to say, just as Massin does, that a little girl of fifteen
can't invent such plans and carry them out, or make an old man of
eighty-three, who has never set foot in a church except to be married,
change his opinions,--now don't tell me he has such a horror of
priests that he wouldn't even go with the girl to the parish church
when she made her first communion. I'd like to know why, if Doctor
Minoret hates priests, he has spent nearly every evening for the last
fifteen years of his life with the Abbe Chaperon. The old hypocrite
never fails to give Ursula twenty francs for wax tapers every time she
takes the sacrament. Have you forgotten the gift Ursula made to the
church in gratitude to the cure for preparing her for her first
communion? She spent all her money on it, and her godfather returned
it to her doubled. You men! you don't pay attention to things. When I
heard that, I said to myself, 'Farewell baskets, the vintage is done!'
A rich uncle doesn't behave that way to a little brat picked up in the
streets without some good reason."

"Pooh, cousin; I dare say the good man is only taking her to the door
of the church," replied the post master. "It is a fine day, and he is
out for a walk."

"I tell you he is holding a prayer-book, and looks sanctimonious
--you'll see him."

"They hide their game pretty well," said Minoret, "La Bougival told me
there was never any talk of religion between the doctor and the abbe.
Besides, the abbe is one of the most honest men on the face of the
globe; he'd give the shirt off his back to a poor man; he is incapable