“Hold your tongue!” replied my father, “you are a dissipated fellow. You have no respect for your cloth. Return to where you came from and look, if you please, in the street, if Queen Pédauque is suffering from chilblains.”
But my mother made the friar a sign to sit down under the chimney-mantel, which he softly did.
“One has to forgive much to Capuchins,” said the abbé, “because they sin without malice.”
My father begged of M. Coignard not to speak any more of the breed, the name alone of which burnt his ears.
“Master Léonard,” said the priest, “philosophy conducts the soul to clemency. As far as I am concerned I willingly give absolution to knaves, rogues and rascals and all the wretched. And more, I owe no grudge to good people, though in their case there is much insolence. And if, Master Léonard, like myself, you should have been familiar with respectable people, you would know that they are not a rap better than the others, and are often of a less agreeable companionship. I have been seated at the third table of the Bishop of Séez and two attendants, both clad in black, were at my sides: constraint and weariness.”
“It must be acknowledged,” said my mother, “that the servants of his Grace had some queer names. Why did he not call them Champagne, Olive or Frontin as is usual?”
The priest continued:
“It’s true, certain persons get easily accustomed to the inconveniences to be borne by living with the great. There was at the second table of the bishop a very polite canon who kept on ceremony till his last moment. When the news of his bodily decline reached the bishop he went to his room and found him dying. ‘Alas,’ said the canon, ‘I beg your Grace’s pardon to be obliged to die before your eyes.’ ‘Do, do! Don’t mind me,’ said the bishop with the utmost kindness.”
At this moment my mother brought the roast and put it on the table with a movement of homely gravity which caused my father some emotion; with his mouth full he shouted:
“Barbe, you’re a holy and worthy woman.”