“But,” added the monk, “Father Bauny has gone beyond this; he has taught valets how to perform these sorts of offices for their masters quite innocently, by making them direct their intention, not to the sins to which they are accessary, but to the gain which is to accrue from them. In his Summary of Sins, p. 710, first edition, he thus states the matter: ‘Let confessors observe,’ says he, ‘that they cannot absolve valets who perform base errands, if they consent to the sins of their masters; but the reverse holds true, if they have done the thing merely from a regard to their temporal emolument.’ And that, I should conceive, is no difficult matter to do; for why should they insist on consenting to sins of which they taste nothing but the trouble? The same Father Bauny has established a prime maxim in favor of those who are not content with their wages: ‘May servants who are dissatisfied with their wages, use means to raise them by laying their hands on as much of the property of their masters as they may consider necessary to make the said wages equivalent to their trouble? They may, in certain circumstances; as when they are so poor that, in looking for a situation, they have been obliged to accept the offer made to them, and when other servants of the same class are gaining more than they, elsewhere.’” “Ha, father!” cried I, “that is John d’Alba’s passage, I declare.” “What John d’Alba?” inquired the father: “what do you mean?” “Strange, father!” returned I: “do you not remember what happened in this city in the year 1647? Where in the world were you living at that time?” “I was teaching cases of conscience in one of our colleges far from Paris,” he replied.