I could not help laughing. "Well, I dare say I did say something like it. But, Margot, it is only when I am getting well that I think so. When I am well, to begin with, I don't want to go through the pain again."
"When my Damoiselle is truly well of the mortal disease of sin, she will never need to go through the pain again. But that will not be till the sin and the body are laid down together."
"O Margot! don't. I hate to think of dying."
"Yes. It is pleasanter to think of living. They are well for whom all the dying comes first, and the life is hereafter."
"Well, I suppose I shall be all right," said I, jumping into bed. "Monseigneur pays my Church dues, and I hear the holy mass sung every day. I say my prayers night and morning, and in all my life I never was so wicked as to touch meat on a fast-day. I think, on the whole, I am a very good girl."
"Will my Damoiselle be angry if I ask her whether the good Lord thinks the same?"
"Because, if Father Eudes read it right, we do know. 'There is none that doeth good, no, not one.'"
"Margot, how thou must listen to Father Eudes! I hear him mumbling away, but I never bother my head with what he is saying. He has got to say it; and I have got to sit there till he has done; that is all. I amuse myself in all sorts of ways--count the bits of glass in the window, or watch the effect of the crimson and blue light creeping over the stalls and pillars, or think how Saint Agatha would look in a green robe instead of a purple one. What makes thee listen to all the stuff he says?"
"My Damoiselle sees that--saving her presence--I am a little like her. I want to know."
"But Father Eudes never tells us anything worth knowing, surely!"
"Ha! Pardon me, my Damoiselle. He reads the true words of the good God from the holy Evangels. Commonly they are in the holy Latin tongue, and then I can only stand and listen reverently to the strange sounds: the good God understands, not I. But now and then I suppose the blessed Lord whispers to Father Eudes to put it into French for a moment: and that is what I am listening for all the time. Then I treasure the words up like some costly gem; and say them to myself a hundred times over, so that I may never forget them any more. Oh, it is a glad day for me when Father Eudes says those dear words in French!"