with Cousin Pierre in a brilliantly-lighted _salon_, with a frantic
mother at the keyhole and all the servants grinning upon their knees
searching for the missing screws, he added twenty thousand francs to her
_dot_ on the spot, and Pierre wrote to his other _fiancée_ that he had
"changed his intentions."

"Mamma's _tapage_ was too funny," laughed Madame Pierre, telling me
this story herself. "Pierre and I laughed well on our side of the door,
although we were careful not to let maman hear us. For we had often been
alone together before when _nobody knew it_."

Which makes all the difference in the world in our ville, as well as
elsewhere.

Pierre's funny experience did not end with his betrothal. In relating
the adventure which follows, I wish it distinctly to be understood that
I do it in all respect, admiration, and reverence for the Church which
is the mother of all Churches calling themselves Christian. The Holy
Roman Catholic Church is no less holy that her servants are so often
base and vile and that her livery is so often stolen to serve evil in.
What wickedness and hypocrisy have we not in our own Protestant clergy,
and without even the tremendous excuse for it which the conditions of
European society give for the occasional levity of its priesthood! In
France the Church is a recognized profession, to which parents destine
and for which they educate their sons without waiting for them to
exhibit any special bias toward a religious life. In spite of
themselves, many young men are even forced into the priesthood, not only
by strong family influence, but through having been educated so as to be
absolutely unfitted for any other walk of life. With us the priesthood
is a matter of deliberate and perfectly voluntary choice, and he who