"What is it ails you?" said the good archbishop, uneasy at the groans
and "oh! ohs!" of his clerk.

"Ah! my Lord," answered the poor priest, "I am wondering how it is
that so light and sweet a woman can weigh so heavily upon my heart."

"Which one?" said the archbishop, putting down his breviary which he
was reading for others--the good man.

"Oh! Mother of God! You will scold me, I know, my good master, my
protector, because I have seen the lady of a cardinal at the least,
and I am weeping because I lack more than one crown to enable me to
convert her."

The archbishop, knitting the circumflex accent that he had above his
nose, said not a word. Then the very humble priest trembled in his
skin to have confessed so much to his superior. But the holy man
directly said to him, "She must be very dear then--"

"Ah!" said he, "she has swallowed many a mitre and stolen many a
cross."

"Well, Philippe, if thou will renounce her, I will present thee with
thirty angels from the poor-box."

"Ah! my lord, I should be losing too much," replied the lad,
emboldened by the treat he promised himself.

"Ah! Philippe," said the good prelate, "thou wilt then go to the devil
and displease God, like all our cardinals," and the master, with