"Did you not ask me for a dozen?" he replied.
She began to be angry:
"Take care Abbé. It rests with you if we are to be friends or enemies. Will you compose the twelve sermons? Think well before you answer."
"Mademoiselle," said Monsieur l'Abbé Coignard, "I have done blameworthy things in my life, but not after reflection."
"You will not? Quite certain? One—two—You refuse? Abbé, I shall take my revenge."
For some time she sulked, mute and bad-tempered, on the bench. Then all at once she started crying:
"Have done, Monsieur l'Abbé! Have done! At your age, and a man of your cloth to plague me thus! Fie Monsieur l'Abbé! Fie! How shameful, Monsieur l'Abbé!"
As she was squealing at her shrillest, the Abbé saw Mademoiselle Lecoeur, of the draper's shop at the sign of the Trois Pucelles, pass through the porch. She was going thus late to confess to the third vicaire of St. Benoît, and turned away her head in sign of her huge disgust.
He owned to himself that Catherine's revenge was prompt and sure, for Mademoiselle Lecoeur's sense of virtue, fortified by age, had become so vigorous, that she was down upon every impropriety of the parish, and seven times a day stabbed with the point of her tongue the carnal sinners of the Rue St. Jacques.
But Catherine herself did not know how complete was her revenge. She had seen Mademoiselle Lecoeur come into the market-place, but she had not seen my father who was following closely.