d to her: 'I will not have my
Spouses dainty.'

"Well, and I should run the risk of a similar reproof, if I attempted to
touch a morsel of meat or to drink a drop of coffee or wine."

"And yet," said Durtal to himself as he came away, "it is quite evident
that the woman is not mad. She has nothing the matter with her, either
hysterical or mental: she is fragile and very thin, but she is scarcely
nervous, and in spite of the laconic character of her meals she is in
very good health, indeed is never ailing; nay more, she is a woman of
good sense and an admirable manager. Up by daybreak, after Communion she
soaps and washes all the linen herself, makes the sheets and shirts,
mends the Abbe's gowns, and lives with amazing economy, while taking
care that her master wants for nothing. Such a sagacious apprehension of
the conduct of life has no connection with lunacy or delirium."

He knew too that she would never take any wages. It is true that in the
sight of a world which gives its whole mind to legalized larceny this
woman's disinterestedness might be enough to prove her insanity; but
Durtal, in contradiction to received ideas, did not think that a
contempt for money was necessarily allied with madness, and the more he
thought of it the more was he convinced that she was a saint, and not a
strait-laced saint, but indulgent and cheerful.

What he could positively assert was that she was very good to him; ever
since his return from La Trappe she had helped him in every way,
encouraging his spirits when she saw him depressed, and going, in spite
of his protesting, to look over his wardrobe when she suspected that
there might be sutures to operate upon, and buttons to replace.

This intimacy had become even closer since their life in common, all
three together, on the occasion of Durtal's accompanying them, at their
entreaty, to La Salette. And then suddenly their affectionate
familiarity was endangered, for the Abbe Gevresin left Paris.

The Bishop of Chartres died, and his successor was one of Gevresin's
oldest friends. On the very day when the Abbe Le Tilloy des Mofflaines
was promoted to the episcopal throne, he begged Gevresin to accompany
him to Chartres. There was an anxious struggle in the old priest's mind.
He was ailing, weary, good for nothing, and at the bottom of his heart
longed only never to move; but on the other hand he had not the courage
to refuse his poor support to Monseigneur des Mofflaines. He tried