"True. They expelled me. And why? Why? Tell me that."

"Out with it."

"For instituting reforms. Religion is a farce!"

A woman, scenting a story, issued from the door, and leaning on the shoulder of her husband, said:

"Come, Citoyen Sans-Chagrin, tell us of that."

"I reformed the confessional," Sans-Chagrin began querulously. "Aye, and it needed it, too. Every day and every hour I had to be disturbed for a confession. I said to myself, if there's so much wickedness, it's because the confessional isn't rigid enough. That's logical, isn't it?"

"And what did you do?"

"Only this. I announced that, in future, to avert confusion and to better impress the penitent with his crime, I would hear confessions thus:

"On Monday, all the liars.

"On Tuesday, all the misers.