“Mother,” said he, “There’s a boy in our school who says there is no God at all, and that it’s no use having priests or Cardinals or Cathedrals,—­it’s all rubbish and humbug!”

“Poor little miserable monster!” exclaimed Madame Patoux, as she peered into the pot where the soup for the Cardinal’s supper was simmering—­“He is arranging himself to become a thief or a murderer, be sure of that, Henri!—­and thou, who art trained in all thy holy duties by the good Pere Laurent, who teaches thee everything which the school is not wise enough to teach, ought never to listen to such wickedness.  If there were no God, we should not be alive at all, thou foolish child!—­for it is only our blessed Saviour and the saints that keep the world going.”

Henri was silent,—­Babette looked at him and made a little grimace of scorn.

“If the Cardinal is a saint,” she said—­“he should be able to perform a miracle.  The little Fabien Doucet has been lame for seven years; we shall bring him to Monseigneur, and he will mend his leg and make him well.  Then we shall believe in saints afterwards.”

Madame Patoux turned her warm red face round from the fire over which she was bending, and stared at her precocious offspring aghast.

“What!  You will dare to address yourself to the Cardinal!” she cried vociferously—­“You will dare to trouble him with such foolishness?  Mon Dieu!—­is it possible to be so wicked!  But listen to me well!—­ If you presume to say one saucy word to Monseigneur, you shall be punished!  What have you to do with the little Fabien Doucet?—­the poor child is sickly and diseased by the will of God.”

“I don’t see why it should be God’s will to make a boy sickly and diseased—­” began the irrepressible Henri, when his mother cut him short with a stamp of her foot and a cry of—­

“Tais-toi!  Silence!  Wicked boy!—­thou wilt kill me with thy naughty speeches!  All this evil comes of the school,—­I would thy father had never been compelled to send thee there!”

As she said this with a vast amount of heat and energy, Henri, seized by some occult and inexplicable emotion, burst without warning into loud and fitful weeping, the sound whereof resembled the yelling of a tortured savage,—­and Babette, petrified at first by the appalling noise, presently gave way likewise, and shrieked a wild accompaniment.

“What ails my children?” said a gentle voice, distinct and clear in its calm intonation even in the midst of the uproar, and Cardinal Bonpre, tall and stately, suddenly appeared upon the threshold—­ “What little sorrows are these?”

Henri’s roar ceased abruptly,—­Babette’s shrill wailing dropped into awed silence.  Both youngsters stared amazed at the venerable Felix, whose face and figure expressed such composed dignity and sweetness; and Madame Patoux, nastily and with frequent gasps for breath, related the history of the skirmish.

“And what will become of such little devils when they grow older, the Blessed Virgin only knows!” she groaned—­“For even now they are so suspicious in nature, that they will not believe in their dinner till they see it!”