“And why again so shy?” I said with a laugh. But he suddenly opened his eyes wide and said:
“You don’t understand why? The young girl wanted love!”
And as he delivered these last words, he looked around mysteriously, and lowered his voice as if he was afraid the walls would hear him.
“Eh! And if she did?” I said with a slight laugh.
“And if she did?” he repeated, angered at the levity with which I was treating the subject.
“Yes,” I said. “If she wanted love, where were you?”
“I was there,” he answered then, both sternly and harshly. “But what love did I have to offer her? The rinsing water from my laundress? I am telling you she was the queen of the girls. She was the worthy object of the world’s adoration. You are strange! A heart opens up before you, an immaculate receptacle of God
