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he expect? She brought no _dot_ into the family." Once upon a time a young man made a friendly call upon a family in our ville, he a distant relative of the family. He sat in the _salon_ with mother and daughter, when suddenly the mother was called away a moment. When she returned, not more than two minutes later,--horror! _she could not enter the room!_ In closing the door she had somehow disarranged the handles; screws had dropped out and could not be found; the knob would not turn. What a situation! A young girl shut up in a locked room with a young man! What a scandal if the story got out in the town! and what could the poor, distracted mamma do to release her daughter from that damning situation without the knowledge of the servants? She dared not even summon a locksmith, for locksmith tongues are free; and who would not shoot out the lip at poor Jeanne, hearing the miserable story at breakfast-tables to-morrow? "You must marry Jeanne, _mon cousin_," cried mamma through the keyhole. "Impossible, _ma cousine_. You know I am _fiance_," laughed he. Nevertheless he did! For when papa heard that Jeanne had remained two whole hours shut up with Cousin Pierre in a brilliantly-lighted _salon_, with a frantic mother at the keyhole and all the servants grinning upon their knees searching for the missing screws, he added twenty thousand francs to her _dot_ on the spot, and Pierre wrote to his other _fiancee_ that he had "changed his intentions." "Mamma's _tapage_ was too funny," laughed Madame Pierre, telling me this story herself. "Pierre and I laughed well on our side of the door, although we were careful not to let maman hear us. For we had often been alone together before when _nobody knew it_." Which makes all the difference in the world in our ville, as well as elsewhere. Pierre's funny experience did not end with his betrothal. In relating the adventure which follows, I wish it distinctly to be understood that I do it in all respect, admiration, and reverence for the Church which is the mother of all Churches calling themselves Christian. The Holy Roman Catholic Church is no less holy that her servants are so often base and vile and that her livery is so often stolen to serve evil in. What wickedness and hypocrisy have we not in our own Protestant clergy, and without even the tremendous excuse for it which the conditions of European society give for the occasional levity of its priesthood! In France
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