What matters in the book is Bergeret, sitting under the elm-tree on the Mall, or in the bookshop, thinking, talking, smiling at the comedy. Notable are his talks with Lantaigne, another candidate for the bishopric, and the type of the intellectual priest. Anatole France may detest the Catholic attitude, but he understands it admirably, and when Lantaigne contends that one can have two opinions, one conscious and rationalistic, the other intuitive and theological, he makes a very fine case. For him, in the case of Joshua, celestial astronomy is not the astronomy of man, and in celestial mathematics, 3 + 3 may make nine, because we do not know all the properties of numbers. At other times Bergeret, who talks to anybody, tells the melancholic story of Napoleon III., who never managed to grant his foster-brother a small post in the civil service: “The Emperor was a charming fellow but, alas, he had no influence.” And so the book wanders on with the opinions of Bergeret, happy, like Æsop, in the freedom of his mind, in spite of the narrowness of his home, conscious that the State is honoured so long as it taxes the poor, and that the republic is easiest to live under because it does not govern much, that revolutions help none save the flourishing and the ambitious. It would all be profoundly pessimistic if it were not always genial. One feels sure that if Bergeret had an agreeable wife, a good cook, and a volume of Lucretius (Oh, Omar!), he would let the State do just what it liked. The story continues in _The Wickerwork Woman_, with Bergeret working up his lecture in the worst room in his flat, where stands the wickerwork figure used for dress-making, symbolic of his unpleasant wife. He grumbles, and then considers the Romans. “They were not heroes, they preferred making roads, they only made war for business reasons.” He thinks of soldiers and wonders whether the sergeant has a right to tell a conscript that his mother is a sow: he decides that the sergeant has this right, for without it there can be no hierarchy or discipline. Then the cook gives notice, and Guitrel goes to Paris while Bergeret talks to a tramp who says that when he was young he lost his pride because people made fun of him....