"I am going with my nuns to visit my tomb."
"Diable, monseigneur!" exclaimed the abbe, "her wits are gone at last."
"It will be truly edifying, will it not, monsieur?" continued the abbess, gravely.
"Indeed," answered the regent, "if you really do this, I doubt not but people will laugh at it twice as much as they did at your suppers."
"Will you accompany me, messieurs?" continued the abbess; "I am going to spend a few minutes in my coffin; it is a fancy I have had a long time."
"You will have plenty of time for that," said the regent; "moreover, you have not even invented this amusement; for Charles the Fifth, who became a monk as you became a nun, without exactly knowing why, thought of it before you."
"Then you will not go with me, monsieur?" said the abbess.
"I," answered the duke, who had not the least sympathy with somber ideas, "I go to see tombs! I go to hear the De Profundis! No, pardieu! and the only thing which consoles me for not being able to escape them some day, is, that I shall neither see the one nor the other."
"Ah, monsieur," answered the abbess, in a scandalized tone, "you do not, then, believe in the immortality of the soul?"
"I believe that you are raving mad. Confound this abbe, who promises me a feast, and brings me to a funeral."