"Madame," replied the hunchback, "I have not taken the sacrament since my
first communion, eight years ago. I am hardly able, by working every day,
and all day long, to earn my bread. I have no time--"

"Gracious heaven!" cried the superior, interrupting, and clasping her
hands with all the signs of painful astonishment. "Is it possible? you do
not practise?"

"Alas, madame! I tell you that I have no time," answered Mother Bunch,
looking disconcertedly at Mother Saint-Perpetue.

"I am grieved, my dear daughter," said the latter sorrowfully, after a
moment's silence, "but I told you that, as we place our friends in none
but pious houses, so we are asked to recommend none but pious persons,
who practise their religious duties. It is one of the indispensable
conditions of our institution. It will, therefore, to my great regret, be
impossible for me to employ you as I had hoped. If, hereafter, you should
renounce your present indifference to those duties, we will then see."

"Madame," said Mother Bunch, her heart swollen with tears, for she was
thus forced to abandon a cheering hope, "I beg pardon for having detained
you so long--for nothing."

"It is I, my dear daughter, who regret not to be able to attach you to
the institution; but I am not altogether hopeless, that a person, already
so worthy of interest, will one day deserve by her piety the lasting
support of religious people. Adieu, my dear daughter! go in peace, and
may God be merciful to you, until the day that you return with your whole
heart to Him!"