All the ladies, you may be sure, are there.

"Make a little room for me, dear," whispers a newcomer, edging her way
through trains, kneeling-stools, and chairs.

"Ah! is that you, dear? Come here. Clementine and Madame de B. are
there in the corner at the cannon's mouth. You will have to wait two
good hours."

"If Madame de B. is there, it does not surprise me. She is
inexhaustible, and there is no other woman who is so long in telling a
thing. Have all these people not had their turn yet? Ah! there is
Ernestine." (She waves her hand to her quietly.) "That child is an
angel. She acknowledged to me the other day that her conscience troubled
her because, on reading the 'Passion,' she could not make up her mind to
kiss the mat."

"Ah! charming; but, tell me, do you kiss the mat yourself?"

"I! no, never in my life; it is so nasty, dear."

"You confess to the omission, at least?"

"Oh! I confess all those little trifles in a lump. I say, 'Father, I
have erred out of human self-respect.' I give the total at once."

"That is just what I do, and that dear Abbe Gelon discharges the bill."

"Seriously, time would fail him if he acted otherwise. But it seems to