e table sat
Fraulein Emerenzia, on very intimate terms with her neighbor, a young
lawyer. She wore the skirt of a favorite dress of Theudelinde's, a
flame-colored brocade; the body could not fit her corpulent form, so
she had her mistress's best lace shawl wrapped round her. Her face was
red; she had a large tumbler of wine before her, and she smoked a
pipe. The modest Emerenzia!

The men were all drunk and noisy, the women screamed in an unearthly
manner; the bagpipes squealed; the table resounded with thumps and the
clatter of the portress's clogs. From the altar came the voice of the
mock priest, his arms outstretched in blessing. Through the din the
words "Bacchus vobiscum" were heard, and the tinkle of the bell. This
mock priest was no other than Michael the sacristan, who brought all
the church ornaments confided to his care. He wore the pastor's
vestments, and on his head an improvised skull-cap. The acolyte was
the parish bell-ringer.

The countess was cut to the heart. The terrible ingratitude,
especially of these girls, to whom she had been as a mother--more
anxious indeed than their own mothers to keep them pure and
innocent--wounded the poor lady who had taught them to sing hymns on
Sunday, had fed them from her own table, and had never allowed them to
read a novel or hear a bad word. And this was the outcome of her
efforts. They insulted the graves of her ancestors, played upon her
nervous fears, destroyed her rest, nearly drove her mad with their
ghostly noises, wore her clothes at their orgies, and, worse insult of
all, she, a high-born lady and a pure woman, had the degradation of
wearing these same garments, defiled as they were with the smell of
wine and stale tobacco.

Bitter as such ingratitude was, it counted as nothing in comparison
with the profanation of using the holiest things of religion, the
sacred ornaments of the Church, to carry out these impious rites. "Woe
to them from whom scandal cometh," says the Scripture, and this woe
means pain and suffering that no soothing balsam can alleviate.

A mortal terror still filled the countess's heart. She was in the
presence of those who had no control over their already besotted
senses. If these drunken savages, these unsexed women, found their
revels were discovered, what was to hinder them tearing her to pieces?
There was only one man between her and them. Theudelinde looked at her
solitary protector. His eyes gleamed with such apostolic anger