The Countess sought to collect herself, but I saw very well that her troubled spirit vainly strove to recover itself. By a singular phenomenon I could see into her brain, and her thoughts appeared to me one after the other. She was saying to herself, “Let me collect myself; our Father, give me grace to collect myself,” but the more effort she made to restrain her imagination the more it became difficult to restrain and slipped through her fingers. “I had made a serious examination of my conscience, however,” she added. “Not ten minutes ago as I was getting out of my carriage I counted up three sins; there was one above all I wished to mention. How these little things escape me! I must have left them in the carriage.” And she could not help smiling to herself at the idea of these three little sins lost among the cushions. “And the poor Abbe waiting for me in his box. How hot it must be in there! he is quite red. Good Heavens! how shall I begin? I can not invent faults? It is that torn dress which has upset me. And there is Louise, who is to meet me at five o’clock at the dressmaker’s. It is impossible for me to collect myself. O God, do not turn away your face from me, and you, Lord, who can read in my soul--Louise will wait till a quarter past five; besides, the bodice fits--there is only the skirt to try on. And to think that I had three sins only a minute ago.” All these different thoughts, pious and profane, were struggling together at once in the Countess’s brain, so that I thought the moment had come to interfere and help her a little. “Come,” I said, in a paternal voice, leaning forward benevolently and twisting my snuff-box in my fingers. “Come, my dear Madame, and speak fearlessly; have you nothing to reproach yourself with? Have you had no impulses of--worldly coquetry, no wish to dazzle at the expense of your neighbor?” I had a vague idea that I should not be contradicted. “Yes, father,” she said, smoothing down her bonnet strings, “sometimes; but I have always made an effort to drive away such thoughts.” “That good intention in some degree excuses you, but reflect and see how empty are these little triumphs of vanity, how unworthy of a truly poor soul and how they draw it aside from salvation. I know that there are certain social exigencies--society. Yes, yes, but after all one can even in those pleasures which the Church tolerates--I say tolerates--bring to bear that perfume of good-will toward one’s neighbor of which the Scriptures speak, and which is the appanage--in some degree... the glorious appanage. Yes, yes, go on.” “Father, I have not been able to resist certain temptations to gluttony.”