“Even while permitting yourself to pick up here and there what must, after all, be bestowed on you as tokens of gratitude, you, Catherine, could blossom forth in faith, hope, and charity, love the poverty-stricken, and visit the sick. You could be charitable and compassionate; and find pure delight in the sight of the skies, the waters, the woods, and the fields. Of a morning, on opening your window, you could praise God while listening to the song of the birds. On days of pilgrimage you might climb the hill of St. Valérien, and there, beneath the Calvary, softly bewail your lost innocence. You could act in such a way that He who alone reads our hearts would say: ‘Catherine is my creature, and I know her by the glimmerings of a clear light not altogether extinguished in her.’” Catherine interrupted him: “But Abbé,” she said drily, “you are spinning me a sermon.” “Did you not ask me for a dozen?” he replied. She began to be angry: “Take care Abbé. It rests with you if we are to be friends or enemies. Will you compose the twelve sermons? Think well before you answer.” “Mademoiselle,” said Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, “I have done blameworthy things in my life, but not after reflection.” “You will not? Quite certain? One—two—You refuse? Abbé, I shall take my revenge.” For some time she sulked, mute and bad-tempered, on the bench. Then all at once she started crying: “Have done, Monsieur l’Abbé! Have done! At your age, and a man of your cloth to plague me thus! Fie Monsieur l’Abbé! Fie! How shameful, Monsieur l’Abbé!” As she was squealing at her shrillest, the Abbé saw Mademoiselle Lecoeur, of the draper’s shop at the sign of the _Trois Pucelles_, pass through the porch. She was going thus late to confess to the third _vicaire_ of St. Benoît, and turned away her head in sign of her huge disgust. He owned to himself that Catherine’s revenge was prompt and sure, for Mademoiselle Lecoeur’s sense of virtue, fortified by age, had become so vigorous, that she was down upon every impropriety of the parish, and seven times a day stabbed with the point of her tongue the carnal sinners of the Rue St. Jacques. But Catherine herself did not know how complete was her revenge. She had seen Mademoiselle Lecoeur come into the market-place, but she had not seen my father who was following closely. He was coming with me to look for the Abbé in the porch, and take him to the _Petit Bacchus_. My father had a liking for Catherine. Nothing vexed him more than to see her close beset by gallants. He had no illusions about her conduct. But as he said, knowing and seeing are two different things. Now Catherine’s cries had reached his ears quite clearly. He was hasty and incapable of self-restraint. I was much afraid that his wrath would burst forth in coarse suggestion or savage threats. I already saw him drawing his larding-pin, which he wore on his apron-string like an honourable weapon, for he gloried in his art and in his spit.