“‘I stole it for you.’

“She looked at me with astonishment and delight in her large eyes.

“‘Oh!  You stole it?  Where?’

“‘In the cathedral; in the very shrine of the Eleven Thousand Virgins.’

“Her heart beat with pleasure, and she murmured: 

“‘Oh!  Did you really do that-for me?  Tell me-all about it!’

“That was the climax; I could not retract what I had said.  I made up a fanciful story; with precise details:  I had given the custodian of the building a hundred francs to be allowed to go about the building by myself; the shrine was being repaired, but I happened to be there at the breakfast hour of the workmen and clergy; by removing a small panel, I had been enabled to seize a small piece of bone (oh! so small), among a quantity of others (I said a quantity, as I thought of the amount that the remains of the skeletons of eleven thousand virgins must produce).  Then I went to a goldsmith’s and bought a casket worthy of the relic; and I was not sorry to let her know that the silver box cost me five hundred francs.

“But she did not think of that; she listened to me, trembling, in an ecstasy, and whispering:  ‘How I love you!’ she threw herself into my arms.

“Just note this:  I had committed sacrilege for her sake.  I had committed a theft; I had violated a church; I had violated a shrine; violated and stolen holy relics, and for that she adored me, thought me perfect, tender, divine.  Such is woman, my dear Abbe, every woman.

“For two months I was the most admirable of lovers.  In her room, she had made a kind of magnificent chapel in which to keep this bit of mutton chop, which, as she thought, had made me commit that divine love-crime, and she worked up her religious enthusiasm in front of it every morning and evening.  I had asked her to keep the matter secret, for fear, as I said, that I might be arrested, condemned, and given over to Germany, and she kept her promise.

“Well, at the beginning of the summer, she was seized with an irresistible desire to see the scene of my exploit, and she teased her father so persistently (without telling him her secret reason), that he took her to Cologne, but without telling me of their trip, according to his daughter’s wish.

“I need not tell you that I had not seen the interior of the cathedral.  I do not know where the tomb (if there be a tomb) of the Eleven Thousand Virgins is; and then, it appears, it is unapproachable, alas!

“A week afterward, I received ten lines, breaking off our engagement, and then an explanatory letter from her father, whom she had, somewhat late, taken into her confidence.

“At the sight of the shrine, she had suddenly seen through my trickery and my lie, and at the same time discovered my real innocence of any crime.  Having asked the keeper of the relics whether any robbery had been committed, the man began to laugh, and pointed out to them how impossible such a crime was.  But, from the moment that I had not plunged my profane hand into venerable relics, I was no longer worthy of my fair-haired, sensitive betrothed.