you have made me quite beside myself
with your stories.

--It was you who wished it.

--The Abbe Fortin! the Abbe Braqueminet! God of heaven! and who besides?

--The Abbe Marcel!

--Yes, it is true, I also ... I have been on the point of transgressing.
Ah! temptation is sometimes very strong, Veronica, my good Veronica; the
noble thing is to resist.

The greatest saints have succumbed. St. Origen was obliged to employ a
grand means, you know what, my daughter?

--Monsieur Fortin has told me. But you must not act like that saint; that
would be a pity, it would be better to succumb, dear Monsieur Marcel. How I
like your name, Marcel, Marcel, it is so soft to the mouth.

--To resist temptation like Jesus on the mountain....

--There was but one Jesus.

--Like St. Antony in the desert....

--That is rubbish; in the desert no one could tempt him.

--Leave the room, Veronica; since you have talked to me, I understand the
fault of your former masters; leave the room.

--Are you afraid of me then? Angels of heaven, a woman like me. Is it
possible? Ah, I should have been very proud of it.

--Proud to make me sin?

--Sin! Sin! Monsieur le Cure: why do we call that a sin?

She came nearer to him. He wished to rise from his chair, but his hand went
astray, he never knew how, on his servant's waist.

Oh vow of chastity, sentiments of modesty, manly dignity and priestly
virtue, where were you, where were you?

LIV.

MATER SAEVA CUPIDINUM.

"Well, you have found it, this ephemeral happiness."

BABILLOT (_La Mascarade humaine_).

Sadness succeeds to joy, deception to illusion, the awakening to the dream,
the head-ache to the debauch.

When the crime is perpetrated, remorse, the avenging lash of virtue, comes
and scourges the conscience. "Come, up, vile thing! thou hast slept over
long."

And it exposes to the wretch the emptiness of pleasures, purchased at the
price of honour.

The dawn found the Cure of Althausen groaning secretly to himself on his
couch.

He had made himself guilty of an abominable wickedness, he had just
committed an inexcusable crime, he had succumbed cowardly, ignominiously;
he had betrayed his faith, abjured his priestly oaths, forgotten his
duties, prostituted his dignity on the withered breast of an old corrupted
maid-servant.

Suzanne, the adorable young girl, who in the first place had insensibly and
involuntarily drawn him on the road of perjury, for whom he wo