Veronica took several sips of the brandy which remained at the bottom of the cup, collected her thoughts for a moment, and casting her eyes down with a modest air, she proceeded: 

—­The good Monsieur Fortin, as perhaps you know, used to drink a little of an evening.

—­Oh, he used to drink!

—­Yes, not every day, but every now and then; two or three times a week:  but you know ... quite nicely, properly, without making any noise; he was gayer than usual, that was all.  But when he reached that point, though he was ordinarily as timid as a lay-brother, he became as bold as a gendarme, and he was very ... how shall I say?... very enterprising.  I may say that between ourselves, Monsieur le Cure, you understand that strangers never knew anything about it.  If by chance anyone came and asked for him at these times, I used to say that he had gone out, or that he was ill.  One day, I was finely put out.  Christopher Gilquin’s daughter came to call him to her mother who was at the point of death.  He took it into his head to try and kiss her.  The little one, who was hardly fifteen, did not know what it meant.  I made her understand that it was to console her, and through pure affection for her and for her mamma.  It passed muster.  But when she had gone I gave it to him finely, and I made him go to bed ... and sharply too.

—­And he obeyed you?

—­I should think so, and without a word.  He saw very well he was wrong.  One evening then ...  I had been in his service hardly six months—­I must tell you first that he had looked at me very queerly for some time; I let him do so and said to myself:  “Here is another of them who will do like the rest.”  And I waited for it to happen.  I was better-looking then than I am now:  I was ten years younger, Monsieur le Cure.

—­Ten years younger! but you were thirty then.  How could you be a Cure’s servant at that age?  Our rules are opposed to it.

—­I passed as his relation.  And that was tolerated.  Besides, when Monseigneur made his visitation, I did not show myself ... for form’s sake, for Monseigneur knew very well that I was there.  I met him once on the stairs; he took hold of my chin, looked at me very hard, and said in a sly way:  “Here is this little spiritual sister then; faith, she is a pretty little rogue.”  I was so bashful.  I asked Monsieur Fortin what a spiritual sister was, and he told me that they used formerly to call women so who lived with priests.  They say that all had two or three spiritual sisters.  What indecency!  I should not have allowed that.

—­Spiritual sister is not exactly the expression, said Marcel, it is adoptive sister, because they were adopted.[1] Alas, Veronica, the clergy were slightly dissolute in former times:  it is no longer so in our days, in which so many holy ecclesiastics give an example of the rarest virtues.

—­Oh, three wives, Monsieur le Cure! three wives! sweet Jesus! they must have torn out each other’s eyes.