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 And why, I should like to know? You make them all believe that you are a saint!"

Because I know how to behave like a saint; whereas you—you behave like a fool. Why, you can't stop swearing for an hour, and you would be breaking all the mugs after dinner!'

I say, Népomucène,' rejoined the other, 'do you fancy that you would get off scot-free if I were caught and tried?'

Why not?' answered the Trappist. 'I had no hand in your folly, nor did I advise anything of this kind.'

Ha! ha! my fine apostle!' cried Antony, throwing himself back in his chair in a fit of laughter. 'You are glad enough about it, now that it is done. You were always a coward; and had it not been for me you would never have thought of anything better than getting yourself made a Trappist, to ape devotion and afterward get absolution for the past, so as to have a right to draw a little money from the "Headbreakers" of Sainte-Sévère. By Jove! a mighty fine ambition, to give up the ghost under a monk's cowl after leading a pretty poor life and only tasting half its sweets, let alone hiding like a mole! Come, now; when they have hung my pretty Bernard, and the lovely Edmonde is dead, and when the old neck-breaker has given back his big bones to the earth; when we have inherited all that pretty fortune yonder, you will own that we have done a capital stroke of business—three at a blow! It would cost me rather too much to play the saint, seeing that convent ways are not quite my ways, and that I don't know how to wear the habit; so I shall throw the cowl to the winds, and content myself with building a chapel