The confessor agreed with him, and they walked out of church comfortably together, and entered afterwards a _café_, where they sat down to refresh themselves after the fatigues of their devotion. A respectable old gentleman, with a number of orders at his button-hole, presently entered the room, and sauntered up to the marble table, before which reposed Simon and his clerical friend. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ he said, as he took a place opposite them, and began reading the papers of the day. ‘Bah!’ said he, at last,--‘sont-ils grands ces journaux Anglais? Look, sir,’ he said, handing over an immense sheet of the _Times_ to Mr. Gambouge, ‘was ever anything so monstrous?’ Gambouge smiled politely, and examined the proffered page. ‘It is enormous,’ he said; ‘but I do not read English.’ ‘Nay,’ said the man with the orders, ‘look closer at it, Signor Gambouge; it is astonishing how easy the language is.’ Wondering, Simon took the sheet of paper. He turned pale as he looked at it, and began to curse the ices and the waiter. ‘Come, M. l’Abbé he said; ‘the heat and glare of this place are intolerable.’ * * * * * The stranger rose with them. ‘Au plaisir de vous revoir, mon cher monsieur,’ said he; ‘I do not mind speaking before the Abbé here, who will be my very good friend one of these days; but I thought it necessary to refresh your memory, concerning our little business transaction six years since; and could not exactly talk of it _at church_, as you may fancy.’ Simon Gambouge had seen, in the double-sheeted _Times_, the paper signed by himself, which the little Devil had pulled out of his fob. * * * * * There was no doubt on the subject; and Simon, who had but a year to live, grew more pious, and more careful than ever. He had consultations with all the doctors of the Sorbonne and all the lawyers of the Palais. But his magnificence grew as wearisome to him as his poverty had been before; and not one of the doctors whom he consulted could give him a pennyworth of consolation. Then he grew outrageous in his demands upon the Devil, and put him to all sorts of absurd and ridiculous tasks; but they were all punctually performed, until Simon could invent no new ones, and the Devil sat all day with his hands in his pockets doing nothing. One day Simon’s confessor came bounding into the room with the greatest glee. ‘My friend,’ said he, ‘I have it! Eureka!--I have found it. Send the Pope a hundred thousand crowns, build a new Jesuit College at Rome, give a hundred gold candlesticks to St. Peter’s; and tell his Holiness you will double all, if he will give you absolution!’ Gambouge caught at the notion, and hurried off a courier to Rome, _ventre à terre_. His Holiness agreed to the request of the petition, and sent him an absolution, written out with his own fist, and all in due form.