"Very good, very good."
"I want him to say fifteen masses for her, if you will let me?"
"Certainly, my dear, they will serve as the priest's reward, or rather as the reward of his happy ignorance."
I called the peasant woman, and gave her the order to have the masses said, and bade her tell the priest that the masses were to be said for the intention of the person who paid for them. She told me that the aspect of the dead sister was dreadful, and that she had to be guarded by two women who sprinkled her with holy water, lest witches, under the form of cats, should come and tear her limb from limb. Far from laughing at her, I told her she was quite right, and asked where she had got the laudanum.
"I got it from a worthy midwife, and old friend of mine. We got it to send the poor lay-sister to sleep when the pains of child-birth should come on."
"When you put the child at the hospital door, were you recognized?"
"Nobody saw me as I put it into the box, and I wrote a note to say the child had not been baptized."
"Who wrote the note?"
"I did."
"You will, of course, see that the funeral is properly carried out?"