"Monsieur Abbot Morlet, familiarity has its limits--do not oblige me to recall the fact to you any more forcibly!" exclaimed Monsieur Plouernel, flaring into a rage. Then, calming himself with an effort, he continued, sarcastically: "It suits you ill indeed, my reverend sir, to twit me on the empire exercised over me by women. Has no woman ever reigned over you? Could not the record of the vestry tell of a fertile gossip, the hirer-out of chairs at the Church of St. Medard, and widow of Goodman Rodin, the dispenser of holy water in the same parish? Your mistress is the mother of that little Rodin whom you brought here one day last year!" Unmoved by the raillery of Monsieur Plouernel, the Jesuit replied: "Your sarcasm is in the last degree pleasant, and moreover, well to the point, in that it furnishes me the occasion, Count, to give you an excellent lesson. You need the bit, the bridle, and also the whip, my fine gentleman." "I am listening, reverend sir." "Your love for fine ladies of irresistible beauty is capable of leading you into the most mournful follies; while I, by reason of my love for my gossip Rodin, shall be, I hope, able to prevent, and what is more, to repair your insanities." "This is getting curious, Abbot. Continue." "About four months ago, about the beginning of April, at a late hour of the night, a child, overcome with fatigue, fell on the doorstep of a house in St. Francois Street, in the Swamp." "St. Francois Street, in the Swamp! A rascal of a Jew, a skin-flint of a usurer, lives there. You know him, Abbot? He does business with the clergy too?" "It was at the door of that very house that the child sank down with weariness, crying and shivering. The Jew, out of the pity of his heart, took in the little fellow, who, he supposed, had lost his way. Then, succumbing to fatigue and drowsiness, the lad fell asleep on a bench in the room in which the Jew and his wife were conversing." "Bless my heart, holy Father! Your voice is trembling, your nose is growing red, your look is softening, and your eye grows moist! That infant gifted with so precocious an intelligence, that prodigy, surely can be no other than little Rodin, your god-son! Honor to you, Abbot, and to your gossip! You have performed a prodigy, like the Virgin Mary with the Holy Ghost!" "Throughout, the little fellow lost not a word of the conversation between the Jew and his wife; and thanks to a false alarm, adroitly given without by one of our brothers and myself, my god-son, in the course of his feigned sleep, surprised two secrets of inestimable import for the welfare of religion and the nobility. You shall judge--" "You are deceiving yourself, Abbot, in trying to make me believe that from the chatter of a miserable Jew and his wife, a chatter surprised by an urchin, secrets of such importance can be won."