"It is a fine day, and he is out for a walk." "I tell you he is holding a prayer-book, and looks sanctimonious--you'll see him." "They hide their game pretty well," said Minoret, "La Bougival told me there was never any talk of religion between the doctor and the abbe.
Besides, the abbe is one of the most honest men on the face of the globe; he'd give the shirt off his back to a poor man; he is incapable of a base action, and to cheat a family out of their inheritance is--" "Theft," said Madame Massin.
"Worse!" cried Minoret-Levrault, exasperated by the tongue of his gossiping neighbour.
"Of course I know," said Madame Massin, "that the Abbe Chaperon is an honest man; but he is capable of anything for the sake of his poor.

He must have mined and undermined uncle, and the old man has just tumbled into piety.

We did nothing, and here he is perverted! A man who never believed in anything, and had principles of his own! Well! we're done for.

My husband is absolutely beside himself." Madame Massin, whose sentences were so many arrows stinging her fat cousin, made him walk as fast as herself, in spite of his obesity and to the great astonishment of the church-goers, who were on their way to mass.

She was determined to overtake this uncle and show him to the post master.
Nemours is commanded on the Gatinais side by a hill, at the foot of which runs the road to Montargis and the Loing.