She raised her little lace veil and I saw that I was not mistaken.  It was the Countess.  She smiled at me as at a person with whom she was acquainted, but with perfect propriety; she seemed to be saying, “Good-day, my dear Abbe, I do not ask how your rheumatism is, because at this moment you are invested with a sacred character, but I am interested in it all the same.”

This little smile was irreproachable.  I replied by a similar smile, and I murmured in a very low tone, giving her, too, to understand by the expression of my face that I was making a unique concession in her favor, “Are you quite well, dear Madame?”

“Thanks, father, I am quite well.”  Her voice had resumed an angelic tone.  “But I have just been in a passion.”

“And why?  Perhaps you have taken for a passion what was really only a passing moment of temper?”

It does not do to alarm penitents.

“Ah! not at all, it was really a passion, father.  My dress had just been torn from top to bottom; and really it is strange that one should be exposed to such mishaps on approaching the tribunal of——­”

“Collect yourself, my dear Madame, collect yourself,” and assuming a serious look I bestowed my benediction upon her.

The Countess sought to collect herself, but I saw very well that her troubled spirit vainly strove to recover itself.  By a singular phenomenon I could see into her brain, and her thoughts appeared to me one after the other.  She was saying to herself, “Let me collect myself; our Father, give me grace to collect myself,” but the more effort she made to restrain her imagination the more it became difficult to restrain and slipped through her fingers.  “I had made a serious examination of my conscience, however,” she added.  “Not ten minutes ago as I was getting out of my carriage I counted up three sins; there was one above all I wished to mention.  How these little things escape me!  I must have left them in the carriage.”  And she could not help smiling to herself at the idea of these three little sins lost among the cushions.  “And the poor Abbe waiting for me in his box.  How hot it must be in there! he is quite red.  Good Heavens! how shall I begin?  I can not invent faults?  It is that torn dress which has upset me.  And there is Louise, who is to meet me at five o’clock at the dressmaker’s.  It is impossible for me to collect myself.  O God, do not turn away your face from me, and you, Lord, who can read in my soul—­Louise will wait till a quarter past five; besides, the bodice fits—­there is only the skirt to try on.  And to think that I had three sins only a minute ago.”

All these different thoughts, pious and profane, were struggling together at once in the Countess’s brain, so that I thought the moment had come to interfere and help her a little.

“Come,” I said, in a paternal voice, leaning forward benevolently and twisting my snuff-box in my fingers.  “Come, my dear Madame, and speak fearlessly; have you nothing to reproach yourself with?  Have you had no impulses of—­worldly coquetry, no wish to dazzle at the expense of your neighbor?”