"Indeed," said Fortier, "I should have thought she would drop it into the box at the Foundling Hospital."
"The proper thing to do, for then the thing would not have to blush for his mother."
"That is a new point from which to regard that institution! But what has she come after here?"
"It looks as if to see her mother, who might not have been living still."
"Stay, a woman who does not come to confess, methinks?" said the abbé, with a wicked smile.
"Oh, that is not her fault!" said the old maid, "but she has had softening of the brain lately; up to the time when her daughter threw this grief upon her, she was a pious soul who feared God and paid for two chairs when she came to church, one to sit in, the other to put her feet upon."
"But how many chairs did her husband pay for, Billet, the Hero of the Mobs, the Conqueror of the Bastile?" cried the priest, his little eyes sparkling with spite.
"I do not know," returned Angelique simply, "for he never comes to church, while his good wife——"
"Very well, we will settle accounts with him on the day of his good wife's funeral."