ceremony to their reverend abbot.

Blanche found the said good man in a private garden near the high rock
under a flower arcade, and remained stricken with respect at the
countenance of the holy man, although she was accustomed not to think
much of grey hairs.

"God preserve you, Madame; what can you have to seek of one so near
death, you so young?"

"Your precious advice," said she, saluting him with a courtesy; "and
if it will please you to guide so undutiful a sheep, I shall be well
content to have so wise a confessor."

"My daughter," answered the monk, with whom old Bruyn had arranged
this hypocrisy and the part to play, "if I had not the chills of a
hundred winters upon this unthatched head, I should not dare to listen
to your sins, but say on; if you enter paradise, it will be through
me."

Then the seneschal's wife set forth the small fry of her stock in
hand, and when she was purged of her little iniquities, she came to
the postscript of her confession.

"Ah! my father!" said she, "I must confess to you that I am daily
exercised by the desire to have a child. Is it wrong?"

"No," said the abbot.

But she went on, "It is by nature commanded to my husband not to draw
from his wealth to bring about his poverty, as the old women say by
the way."

"Then," replied the priest, "you must live virtuously and abstain from
all thoughts of this kind."

"But I have heard it professed by the Lady of Jallanges, that it was
not a sin when from it one derived neither profit nor pleasure."

"There always is pleasure," said the abbot, "but don't count upon the
child as a profit. Now fix this in your understanding, that it will
always be a mortal sin before God and a crime before men to bring
forth a child through the embraces of a man to whom one is not
ecclesiastically married. Thus those women who offend against the holy
laws of marriage, suffer great penalties in the other world, are in
the power of horrible monsters with sharp and tearing claws, who
thrust them into flaming furnaces in remembrance of the fact that here
below they have warmed their hearts a little more than was lawful."

Thereupon Blanche scratched her ear, and having thought to herself for
a little while, she said to the priest, "How then did the Virgin
Mary?"

"Ah!" replied abbot, "that it is a mystery."

"And what is a mystery?"

"A thing that cannot be explained, and which one ought to believe
without enquiring into it."

"Well then