But enough of this! I do wrong to think of things that make my head ache and turn my stomach. I come back to my little stories. I had much difficulty in leaving the sisters of Our Lady of Thirty-Six Sorrows. In spite of Cléclé's companionship, I was growing old in the box, and beginning to be hungry for liberty. When they understood that I had made up my mind to go, then the worthy sisters offered me places and places. There were places only for me. But I am not always a fool, and I have a keen eye for rascalities. All these places I refused. In all of them I found something that did not suit me. You should have seen the heads of these holy women. It was laughable. They had calculated on finding me a place in the house of some old bigot, where they could get back out of my wages the cost of my board with usury, and I enjoyed playing them a trick in my turn. One day I notified Sister Boniface that it was my intention to go that very evening. She had the cheek to answer me, raising her arms to heaven: "But, my dear child, it is impossible." "How so? Why is it impossible?" "Why, my dear child, you cannot leave the house like that. You owe us more than seventy francs. You will have to pay us first these seventy francs." "And with what?" I replied. "I have not a sou; you can search me." Sister Boniface gave me a hateful look, and, then declared, with severe dignity: "But, Mademoiselle, do you know that this is a robbery? And to rob poor women like us is worse than robbery; it is a sacrilege, for which the good God will punish you. Reflect." Then anger got the better of me, and I cried: "Say, then, who is it that steals here,--you or I? No, but you are astonishing, my little mothers." "Mademoiselle, I forbid you to speak in this way." "Oh! don't talk to me. What? One does your work, one toils like a beast for you from morning to night, one earns enormous money for you, you give us food which dogs would refuse, and then we must pay you into the bargain! Indeed, you have no cheek!" Sister Boniface had turned very pale. I felt that coarse, filthy, furious words were on her lips, and ready to leave them; but, not daring to let them go, she stammered: "Silence! You are a girl without shame, without religion. God will punish you. Go, if you will; but we keep your trunk." I planted myself squarely before her, in an attitude of defiance, and, looking her full in the face, I said: "Well, I should like to see you try it. Just try to keep my trunk, and you will have a visit from the commissary of police in short order. And, if religion consists in patching the dirty pantaloons of your chaplains, in stealing bread from poor girls, in speculating on the horrors that go on every night in the dormitory...." The good sister was fairly white. She tried to cover my voice with her own. "Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle!"