u not go the _messe_ every Sunday?" said
Madame, surprised.

"To the _messe!_" answered Madelon--"what is that? I never was in
a church before."

"Never in a church before!" echoed a chorus of three
astonished voices, while Monsieur added--"Never in this church,
you mean."

"No," answered Madelon, "it is the first time I ever went into
a church at all."

"But, _mon enfant_," said the mother, "you are big enough to
have gone to church long before this. Why, you must be eight
or nine years old, and Nanette here went to the _grand' messe_
before she was five--did you not, Nanette?"

"Yes," says Nanette, with a further sense of superiority added
to that already induced by the contrast of her new white
muslin frock with Madelon's somewhat limp exterior.

"And never missed it for a single Sunday of fete-day since,"
continued Madame, "except last year, when she had the
measles."

"Do you go there every Sunday?" asked Madelon of the child.

"Yes, every Sunday and fete-days. Would you like to see my new
Paroissien? My god-father gave it to me on my last birthday."

"And is it always like to-day, with all the singing, and
music, and people?"

"Yes, always the same, only not always quite so grand, you
know, because to-day is a great fete. Why don't you go to
church always?"

"She is perhaps a little Protestant," suggested the father,
"and goes to the Temple. Is that not it, my child?"

"I do not know," said Madelon, bewildered; "I never went to
any Temple, and I never heard of Protestants. Papa never took
me to church; but then we do not live here, you know."

"But in other churches it is the same--everywhere," cries
Madame.

"What, in all the big churches in Paris, and everywhere?" said
Madelon. "I did not know; I never went into them, but I will
ask papa to take me there now." Then, recurring to her first
difficulty, she repeated, "But what do people go there for?"

"Mais--pour prier le bon Dieu!" said the good man.

"I do not understand," said Madelon, despairingly. "What does
that mean? What were the music and the lights for, and what
were all the pictures about?"

"But is it, then, possible, _ma petite_, that you have had no
one to teach you all these things? And on Sundays, what do you
do then?" said the mother, while Nanette stared more and more
at Madelon, with round eyes.

"We generally go into the country on Sundays," said Madelon.
"Papa never goes to church, I am sure, or he would have taken