in a little carriage drawn by two Astracan
sheep."

"And the Duke of Bordeaux, Ma'me Plumet,"
would the other say. "Diantre! was he not
baptised in water from the Jordan? Do you
remember the Terror, Ma'me Plumet?"

"If I remember it? Imbecile! Was I not
dancing at the Opera when Messieurs of the
Committee sent for me to be one of the nymphs
that marched by the side of the car of the
Goddess of Reason? Ah! yes, I have not had
bad chances in my time," and this she said with a
horrible leer at Lily. "I have had cashmeres
and diamonds in my time. But I have had
misfortunes. It has all been through my devotion to
the Emperor. That accursed minister of police
would not give me a bureau de tabac because of
my sympathies. When I asked for a box–
opener's place at the Funambules, they told me
that I was a Bonapartist. Why not call me a
sorceress at once? And now I am come to
carding mattresses at forty sous a day, and my
soup. Bah!" And the old woman would
expectorate and take another pull at the "goutte
du bon Dieu."

They called Lily "c'te jeunesse," and laughed
at the clumsy way in which she carded. One of
them, La Mère Boustifaille, talked to her one
day—it was in her second year of carding—of
her beauty, and asked her why she buried herself
in that place when she might have cashmeres
and diamonds? Lily shuddered as she heard,
without comprehending, the hag. Her ears
burnt, but her lips were cold. Of all the bad
people in this bad world there is nothing, I
apprehend, worse than a bad old Frenchwoman.

Lily Floris—"c'te jeunesse"—"la petite
Anglaise"—or the "fille de classe Pauline," as
she was indifferently called, was fifteen, and
shapely, and fair. She thanked God every night
in the simple English prayers which had been
taught her by Barbara Bunnycastle, that she did
not hate any one. She prayed for strength to
continue obedient, industrious, and uncomplaining.
But hers was a hard time—a very hard time.

To the rest of the school-girls, in the days
when they condescended to converse with her,
she had been a heretic. They told her that she
was doomed to eternal perdition because she did
not go to mass and cross herself. They were
incredulous as to heretics believing in anything
save Satan—and not much in him. As a heretic,
she was not allowed to accompany the other girls
on Sundays and fête days to the neighbouring
church of St. Philippe du Roule. As a heretic,
she was necessarily excluded from the periodical
catechisings, admonitions, and exhortations,
which took place prior to the yearly festival of
the First Communion.

There were generally twenty or thirty girls
every spring to take this first communion.
They looked inexpressibly peaceful, innocent,
beautiful, in their white frocks and veils, their
snowy wreaths and spotless gloves, their little
white silk stockings and shoes, their bouquets of
white flowers. Lily used to look after them
with longing eyes as they filed through the
playground on their way to the entrance-gate.
She was sorry that she was a heretic; but was
she one, and if so, was it her fault?

She thought, one day, that she would ask the
Abbé Chatain. He was "directeur" of the
establishment. He catechised the young ladies,
and confessed them, and generally prepared them
for the first communion. He was a tall lean
ecclesiastic with a bronzed visage, very high
cheek–bones, a square jaw, broken teeth, somewhat
jaundiced eyes, and iron–grey hair. In his
long black soutane, black rabat with white
cambric edging, heavy shoes with buckles,
flapped hat, and portentous umbrella, he had
seemed for years to Lily an awful and forbidding
personage. He took a great deal of snuff too,
and when he blew his long bassoon–shaped nose
with a blue cotton handkerchief, the sound was
awful. He had a manner of breathing hard, too,
when he spoke, and of screwing up his eyes, and
clattering his jagged teeth, the reverse of
encouraging. Yet the girls said that the Abbé
Chatain was amiable, and forbore to visit the
little peccadilloes they acknowledged in confession
with any unusually disagreeable penances.

It was a long time before Lily could make up
her mind to speak to the abbé. As a heretic, the
ecclesiastic kept aloof from her; and she, too,
dreaded that her addressing him might be an
act open to misconstruction.

One day, however—it was during the August
holidays, and the abbé had called to pay a visit
of politeness to the Marcassin, who, being indisposed,
could not receive him—Lily clothed herself
in the full armour of a desperate resolve, and
sought him out. The worthy ecclesiastic was
pacing up and down the playground, snuffing
and waving the blue cotton pocket–handkerchief
in a contemplative manner, as usual. One flap
of the skirt of his cassock was drawn up,
displaying a not unsymmetrical calf, and in this
traditional clerical coquetry it may be that the
artful arrangement of hooks and strings, known
as "ladies' pages," originated.

Lily stole up to the clergyman, and was about
to address him; to her dismay, he suddenly
produced a book from his pocket. "Alas," she
thought, "the abbé is going to say his breviary,
and he will be walking up and down the
playground for at least twenty minutes without my
daring to speak to him, and then, perhaps,
Madame, who is lying down, will awake, and the
abbé will be called in, and my chance will be gone
for ever."

To her relief, however, the book was not a
breviary. It was doubtless a devout work, but
not of so strictly canonical a nature. Indeed,
the doctrine it contained seemed not only of a
comforting, but of an exhilarating order, for the
abbé, wagging his head approvingly, and following
the text with an appreciating forefinger, would
ever and anon emit a gleeful chuckle. It was a
merry book, and the abbé was no sour ascetic.