The commotion inside that retreat! Pupasse's nasal whine, carrying herlament without any mystery to the outside garden. Such searching ofpockets, rummaging of corners, microscopic examination of the floor!Such crimination and recrimination, protestation, asseveration,assurances, backed by divine and saintly invocations! Pupasse accusedcompanion after companion of filching her sins, which each aftereach would violently deny, producing each her own list from her ownpocket,--proof to conviction of innocence, and, we may say, of guiltalso.

Pupasse declared they had niched it to copy, because her list was thelongest and most complete. She could not go to confession without hersins; she could not go to communion without confession. The tearsrolled down her long skinny nose unchecked, for she never could rememberto use her armkerchief until reminded by Madame Joubert.

She had committed it to memory, as all the others had done theirs;but how was she to know without the list if she had not forgottwelvesomething? And to forget one thing in a general confession they knewwas a mortal sin.