“No,” said Madelon; and then, full of her own ideas, she asked abruptly—­“what was everyone doing in there?”

“In there!—­in the church, do you mean?”

“Yes, in the church—­what was everyone doing?”

“But do you not know, then,” said the mother, “that it is to-day a great fete—­the fete of the Assumption?”

“No,” said Madelon, “I did not know.  Was that why so many people were there?  What were they doing?” she persisted.

“How do you mean?—­do you not go the messe every Sunday?” said Madame, surprised.

“To the messe!” answered Madelon—­“what is that?  I never was in a church before.”

“Never in a church before!” echoed a chorus of three astonished voices, while Monsieur added—­“Never in this church, you mean.”

“No,” answered Madelon, “it is the first time I ever went into a church at all.”

“But, mon enfant,” said the mother, “you are big enough to have gone to church long before this.  Why, you must be eight or nine years old, and Nanette here went to the grand’ messe before she was five—­did you not, Nanette?”

“Yes,” says Nanette, with a further sense of superiority added to that already induced by the contrast of her new white muslin frock with Madelon’s somewhat limp exterior.

“And never missed it for a single Sunday of fete-day since,” continued Madame, “except last year, when she had the measles.”

“Do you go there every Sunday?” asked Madelon of the child.

“Yes, every Sunday and fete-days.  Would you like to see my new Paroissien?  My god-father gave it to me on my last birthday.”

“And is it always like to-day, with all the singing, and music, and people?”

“Yes, always the same, only not always quite so grand, you know, because to-day is a great fete.  Why don’t you go to church always?”

“She is perhaps a little Protestant,” suggested the father, “and goes to the Temple.  Is that not it, my child?”

“I do not know,” said Madelon, bewildered; “I never went to any Temple, and I never heard of Protestants.  Papa never took me to church; but then we do not live here, you know.”

“But in other churches it is the same—­everywhere,” cries Madame.

“What, in all the big churches in Paris, and everywhere?” said Madelon.  “I did not know; I never went into them, but I will ask papa to take me there now.”  Then, recurring to her first difficulty, she repeated, “But what do people go there for?”

“Mais—­pour prier le bon Dieu!” said the good man.

“I do not understand,” said Madelon, despairingly.  “What does that mean?  What were the music and the lights for, and what were all the pictures about?”

“But is it, then, possible, ma petite, that you have had no one to teach you all these things?  And on Sundays, what do you do then?” said the mother, while Nanette stared more and more at Madelon, with round eyes.