“Do you mean the priest?”
“Monsieur the abbé.”
“Jacques, who is he?”
“The Abbé de Granville,” replied Jacques with a shrug, first of one shoulder and then the other, as if the sides of his person took turns in rejecting this statement. “And he sends you to me for the truth, madame. Is not that the craziest part of the play when he knows what I will tell you? There is no limiting a woman, madame, when she takes to whims.”
“Then it really was Mademoiselle de Granville playing priest?”
“Madame, she befools me sometimes until I know not whether to think her man or woman. So secret is this half-sister of my master’s, and so jealous of her pretty abbé, it unsettles a plain soldier. A fine big robust priest he is, and you would take her for a ghost in petticoats. It goes against my conscience, so that I have come nigh to mention it in confession, all this mumming and male-attiring, and even calling for hot shaving-water! Yet she seems an excellent devoted soul when no one crosses her, and for days at a time will be Mademoiselle de Granville, as gentle and timid as a sheep. Besides, women take pleasure in putting on raiment of different kinds, and when you come to look at a priest’s cassock, it is not so far from being a petticoat that I need to raise a scandal against St. Bernard and my commandant’s sister on account of it. M’sieur he minds none of her pranks, and she hath had her humor since I was set to keep guard over her; and if it be a mad humor, it harms no one but herself.”[4]
Claire’s glance rested on the coarse floor where many nailed shoes had left their prints in the grain.
“Such a monomaniac cannot be a pleasant housemate.”