Sophie Author:Philip Moeller Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: [And then as testimony.] Do you know, that next to the books in the library of Mme. du Barry and at the Cathedral, that she has the best collection of the Holy F... more »athers to be found in France? Mlle. Heinel [Enthusiastically. ] How dear of Sophie. The Abbe Not to the exclusion of all else, Mademoiselle, be reassured. Next to the confessions of St. Augustine is an inscribed copy from Voltaire and between the life of St. Louis and the "Little Flowers" of Saint Francis; bounded in citron levant, if I remember rightly, is last year's number of the Secret Memoirs of the Police. Mlle. Heinel How dear of Sophie. The Abbe So you see that whilst her piety is catholic her taste is mixed. Mlle. Heinel [Very deeply.] Dear, dear Sophie. I do not see why she should suffer with all those good books in the house. The Abbe Between ourselves, ladies, I think that she enjoys her tears. Mlle. Heinel [Again outraged.) Oh, what a horrid, cynical idea! Poor Sophie, rushing about like mad, her heart torn with desire and you, you in her very house here say that agony is not agony. I don't see how she can have you for a friend—and to confess to you—why look, Marie, his very eyes are made of ice. I'm sure he's as cold as it must be three feet beyond the North Pole. To my mind, the one thing a priest should have is the milk—the pure white milk of human kindness. Sophie [From the doorway.] Not in too great abundance lest it sour on him. [/ see her, if for the moment I may intrude, in a turquoise blue, a little dim, low and ruffled, with a tiny beaver hat sporting a tossed pink feather caught with a bow of mauve. A wrap of plum colour has fallen from her shoulders. Greuze, in one of his most delicious and unsentimental moments, has painted her. Look at the picture, ...« less