‘Monseigneur,’ said the Abbe, ’neither was I aware that Episcopal surveillance extended to religious houses.’

Margaret here broke in.  She had risen to her feet, and looking at the Archbishop, with eyes beaming in her pale face, she cried:  ’Oh!  Monseigneur, you are come to save me!  These wicked men are striving to marry me against my will.’

‘To celebrate the marriage sacrament,’ continued the Coadjutor, in his calm sneering tone; ’then M. l’Abbe, I suppose you have procured the necessary permission from the curate of the parish to perform the rite at this strange time and place?  I am sorry, Messieurs, to break up so romantic a plan, savouring of the fine days of the quatre fils Aymon, but I must stand up for the claims of the diocese and the parish.’

M. de Lamont turned round to my sister, and made one of his lowest bows, such as no one but a French courtier can make (thank Heaven!).

‘Madame,’ he said, ’we are disconcerted, but I shall still put my trust in the truth that beauty ever pardons the efforts of love.’

‘So it may be Monsieur,’ returned Margaret, already fully herself, and looking as tall, white, and dignified among them as a goddess among apes, ‘so it may be, where there is either beauty or love;’ and she made him a most annihilating curtsey.  Then turning to the Coadjutor she said:  ’Monseigneur, I cannot express my obligations to you;’ and then as Clement stood behind him, she added:  ’Ah, Monsieur, I knew I might reckon on you,’ holding out her hand, English fashion.  She did not see us, but M. d’Aubepine, who was slinking off the scene, like a beaten hound, as well he might, unaware that we were in the antechapel, caught his foot and spur in Madame Darpent’s long trailing cloak, and came down at full length on the stone floor, being perhaps a little flustered with wine.  He lay still for the first moment, and there was an outcry.  One of the soldiers cried out to the other as Madame Darpent’s black dress and white cap flashed into the light: 

’It is the holy saint who has appeared to avenge the sacrilege!  She has struck him dead.’

And behold the superstition affected even the licentious good-for-nothing Abbe.  Down he dropped upon his knees, hiding his eyes, and sobbing out:  ’Sancta Margarita, spare me, spare me!  I vow thee a silver image.  I vow to lead a changed life.  I was drawn into it, holy Lady Saint.  They showed me the Prince’s letter.’

He got it all out in one breath, while some of them were lifting up d’Aubepine, and the Coadjutor was in convulsions of suppressed laughter, and catching hold of Clement’s arm whispered:  ’No, no, Monsieur, I entreat of you, do not undeceive him.  Such a scene is worth anything!  Madame, I entreat of you,’ to Meg, who was stepping forward.

However, of course it could not last long, though as d’Aubepine almost instantly began to swear, as he recovered his senses, Madame Darpent unconsciously maintained the delusion, by saying solemnly in her voice, the gravest and deepest that I ever heard in a Frenchwoman:  ’Add not another sin, sir, to those with which you have profaned this holy place.’