Delighted with the piety of my feelings and with the prospect of recommending this new devotion to her daughter, the good woman promised to fulfil my commission.  I left her, but not before I had placed in her hand ten sequins which I begged her to force upon her daughter’s acceptance to supply herself with the trifles she might require.  She accepted, but at the same time she assured me that her father had taken care to provide her with all necessaries.  The letter which I received from C——­ C——­, on the following Wednesday, was the expression of the most tender affection and the most lively gratitude.  She said that the moment she was alone nothing could be more rapid than the point of the pin which made St. Catherine cut a somersault, and presented to her eager eyes the beloved features of the being who was the whole world to her.  “I am constantly kissing you,” she added, “even when some of the nuns are looking at me, for whenever they come near me I have only to let the top part of the ring fall back and my dear patroness takes care to conceal everything.  All the nuns are highly pleased with my devotion and with the confidence I have in the protection of my blessed patroness, whom they think very much like me in the face.”  It was nothing but a beautiful face created by the fancy of the painter, but my dear little wife was so lovely that beauty was sure to be like her.

She said, likewise, that the nun who taught her French had offered her fifty sequins for the ring on account of the likeness between her and the portrait of the saint, but not out of veneration for her patroness, whom she turned into ridicule as she read her life.  She thanked me for the ten sequins I had sent her, because, her mother having given them to her in the presence of several of the sisters, she was thus enabled to spend a little money without raising the suspicions of those curious and inquisitive nuns.  She liked to offer trifling presents to the other boarders, and the money allowed her to gratify that innocent taste.

“My mother,” added she, “praised your piety very highly; she is delighted with your feelings of devotion.  Never mention again, I beg, the name of my unworthy brother.”

For five or six weeks her letters were full of the blessed St. Catherine, who caused her to tremble with fear every time she found herself compelled to trust the ring to the mystic curiosity of the elderly nuns, who, in order to see the likeness better through their spectacles, brought it close to their eyes, and rubbed the enamel.  “I am in constant fear,” C——­ C——­ wrote, “of their pressing the invisible blue spot by chance.  What would become of me, if my patroness, jumping up, discovered to their eyes a face—­very divine, it is true, but which is not at all like that of a saint?  Tell me, what could I do in such a case?”

One month after the second arrest of P——­ C——­, the jeweller, who had taken my security for the ring, called on me for payment of the bill.  I made an arrangement with him; and on condition of my giving him twenty sequins, and leaving him every right over the debtor, he exonerated me.  From his prison the impudent P——­ C——­ harassed me with his cowardly entreaties for alms and assistance.