in need of stitches, saying, “Take this, Saintot, to the young ladies of Poissy,” meaning to say, “the young lady of Poissy.”  Thinking of affairs connected with the cloister, he did not inform his varlet of the situation of the lady’s house; her desperate condition having been by him discreetly kept a secret.  Saintot took the breeches and went his way towards Poissy, gay as a grasshopper, stopping to chat with friends he met on the way, slaking his thirst at the wayside inns, and showing many things to the breeches during the journey that might hereafter be useful to them.  At last he arrived at the convent, and informed the abbess that his master had sent him to give her these articles.  When the varlet departed, leaving with the reverend mother, the garment accustomed to model in relief the archiepiscopal proportions of the continent nature of the good man, according to the fashion of the period, beside the image of those things of which the Eternal Father had deprived His angels, and which in the good prelate did not want for amplitude.  Madame the abbess having informed the sisters of the precious message of the good archbishop they came in haste, curious and hustling, as ants into whose republic a chestnut husk has fallen.  When they undid the breeches, which gaped horribly, they shrieked out, covering their eyes with one hand, in great fear of seeing the devil come out, the abbess exclaiming, “Hide yourselves my daughters!  This is the abode of mortal sin!”

The mother of the novices, giving a little look between her fingers, revived the courage of the holy troop, swearing by an Ave that no living head was domiciled in the breeches.  Then they all blushed at their ease, while examining this habitavit, thinking that perhaps the desire of the prelate was that they should discover therein some sage admonition or evangelical parable.  Although this sight caused certain ravages in the hearts of those most virtuous maidens, they paid little attention to the flutterings of their reins, but sprinkling a little holy water in the bottom of the abyss, one touched it, another passed her finger through a hole, and grew bolder looking at it.  It has even been pretended that, their first stir over, the abbess found a voice sufficiently firm to say, “What is there at the bottom of this?  With what idea has our father sent us that which consummates the ruin of women?”

“It’s fifteen years, dear mother, since I have been permitted to gaze upon the demon’s den.”

“Silence, my daughter.  You prevent me thinking what is best to be done.”

Then so much were these archiepiscopal breeches turned and twisted about, admired and re-admired, pulled here, pulled there, and turned inside out—­so much were they talked about, fought about, thought about, dreamed about, night and day, that on the morrow a little sister said, after having sung the matins, to which the convent had a verse and two responses—­“Sisters, I have found out the parable of the archbishop.  He has sent us as a mortification his garment to mend, as a holy warning to avoid idleness, the mother abbess of all the vices.”