“Oh, you know about the goats.  My dear young Monsieur, I could never tell when she would fling over her pretended sweetness and put her tongue out at me.  Did she tell you about a boy, the son of pious and rich parents, whom she tried to lead astray into the wildness of thoughts like her own, till the poor dear child drove her off because she outraged his modesty?  I saw him often with his parents at Sunday mass.  The grace of God preserved him and made him quite a gentleman in Paris.  Perhaps it will touch Rita’s heart, too, some day.  But she was awful then.  When I wouldn’t listen to her complaints she would say:  ’All right, sister, I would just as soon go clothed in rain and wind.’  And such a bag of bones, too, like the picture of a devil’s imp.  Ah, my dear young Monsieur, you don’t know how wicked her heart is.  You aren’t bad enough for that yourself.  I don’t believe you are evil at all in your innocent little heart.  I never heard you jeer at holy things.  You are only thoughtless.  For instance, I have never seen you make the sign of the cross in the morning.  Why don’t you make a practice of crossing yourself directly you open your eyes.  It’s a very good thing.  It keeps Satan off for the day.”

She proffered that advice in a most matter-of-fact tone as if it were a precaution against a cold, compressed her lips, then returning to her fixed idea, “But the house is mine,” she insisted very quietly with an accent which made me feel that Satan himself would never manage to tear it out of her hands.

“And so I told the great lady in grey.  I told her that my sister had given it to me and that surely God would not let her take it away again.”

“You told that grey-headed lady, an utter stranger!  You are getting more crazy every day.  You have neither good sense nor good feeling, Mademoiselle Therese, let me tell you.  Do you talk about your sister to the butcher and the greengrocer, too?  A downright savage would have more restraint.  What’s your object?  What do you expect from it?  What pleasure do you get from it?  Do you think you please God by abusing your sister?  What do you think you are?”

“A poor lone girl amongst a lot of wicked people.  Do you think I wanted to go forth amongst those abominations? it’s that poor sinful Rita that wouldn’t let me be where I was, serving a holy man, next door to a church, and sure of my share of Paradise.  I simply obeyed my uncle.  It’s he who told me to go forth and attempt to save her soul, bring her back to us, to a virtuous life.  But what would be the good of that?  She is given over to worldly, carnal thoughts.  Of course we are a good family and my uncle is a great man in the country, but where is the reputable farmer or God-fearing man of that kind that would dare to bring such a girl into his house to his mother and sisters.  No, let her give her ill-gotten wealth up to the deserving and devote the rest of her life to repentance.”