"'How can you be so certain?'
"I was caught, for to say that I had bought it through a man in the streets, would be my destruction. What was I to say? A wild idea struck me, and I said, in a low, mysterious voice:
"'I stole it for you.'
"She looked at me with astonishment and delight in her large eyes.
"'Oh! You stole it? Where?'
"'In the cathedral; in the very shrine of the Eleven Thousand Virgins.'
"Her heart beat with pleasure, and she murmured:
"'Oh! Did you really do that ... for me? Tell me ... all about it!'
"There was an end of it, and I could not go back. I made up a fanciful story, with precise details. I had given the custodian of the building a hundred francs to be allowed to go about the building by myself; the shrine was being repaired, but I happened to be there at the breakfast time of the workmen and clergy; by removing a small panel, I had been enabled to seize a small piece of bone (oh! so small), among a quantity of others, (I said a quantity, as I thought of the amount that the remains of the skeletons of eleven thousand virgins must produce). Then I went to a goldsmith's and bought a casket worthy of the relic; and I was not sorry to let her know that the silver box cost me five hundred francs.
"But she did not think of that; she listened to me, trembling; in an ecstasy, and whispering: