tureen on the table; round which M. Jerome Coignard, my father and
myself were seated. My mother, as was her habit, stood behind her
husband's chair, ready to serve him. He had already filled the
priest's dish when, through the suddenly open door, we saw Friar
Ange, very pale, the nose red, the beard soaked. In his surprise my
father elevated the soup ladle up to the smoked beams of the
ceiling.

My father's surprise was easily explained. Friar Ange, after his
fight with the cutler, had at first disappeared for a lapse of six
months, and now two whole years had passed without his giving any
sign of life. On a certain day in spring he went off with a donkey
laden with relics, and, worse still, he had taken with him Catherine
dressed as a nun. Nobody knew what had become of them, but there was
a rumour at the _Little Bacchus_ that the little friar and the
little sister had had some sort of difference with the authorities
between Tours and Orleans. Without forgetting that one of the vicars
of St Benoit shouted everywhere, and like one possessed, that that
rascal of a Capuchin had stolen his donkey.

"What," exclaimed my father, "this rogue does not lie in a dungeon?
There is then no more justice in this kingdom."

But Friar Ange recited the _Benedicite_ and made the sign of
the cross over the soup-tureen.

"Hola!" continued my father. "Peace to all cant, my beautiful monk!
Confess that you have passed in an ecclesiastical prison at least
one of the two years that your Beelzebub-face has not been seen in
our parish. James Street has been more honest for your absence and