the whole quarter of the town more respectable. Look on that fine
Olibrius, who goes into the fields with the donkey of someone and
the girl of everyone."

"Maybe," replied Friar Ange, eyes on the ground and hands in his
sleeves. "Maybe, Master Leonard, you have Catherine in mind. I have
had the happiness to convert her to a better life, so much and so
well that she ardently wished to follow me, and the relics I was
carrying, and to go with me on some nice pilgrimage, especially to
the Black Virgin of Chartres! I consented under the condition that
she clad herself in ecclesiastical dress, which she did without a
murmur."

"Hold your tongue!" replied my father, "you are a dissipated fellow.
You have no respect for your cloth. Return to where you came from
and look, if you please, in the street, if Queen Pedauque is
suffering from chilblains."

But my mother made the friar a sign to sit down under the chimney-
mantel, which he softly did.

"One has to forgive much to Capuchins," said the abbe, "because they
sin without malice."

My father begged of M. Coignard not to speak any more of the breed,
the name alone of which burnt his ears.

"Master Leonard," said the priest, "philosophy conducts the soul to
clemency. As far as I am concerned I willingly give absolution to
knaves, rogues and rascals and all the wretched. And more, I owe no