Conducted by an usher, a man and a woman threaded their way from the west entrance past the noisy groups towards the green daïs. From their dusty and travel-stained appearance they had evidently journeyed far by road, and by the long garment which he wore—it could hardly be called a cassock—the man was a priest, but a “constitutional.” To his loose mouth and swarthy skin he added a bearing of decided truculence. Beside him there walked two children of about four and six years, and the woman who followed him bore in her arms a wailing infant of a few months old. In spite of her rags and evident misery, the face of the girl, for she was little more, would have won her attention anywhere. It had once been beautiful, but now, across the beauty which still remained, there was written disillusionment absolute and complete. The short hair which curled freely on her forehead had once been covered with the white veil of the novice. The group came to a stand-still opposite the daïs, and the constitutional began to address the President in loud, confident tones. “My name is François Lethon,” he said, “and I am the curé of Tregourez, in Finistère. This,” pointing to the motionless figure of the woman, “is my wife.” Applause from the nearest deputies greeted this remark, some seeing fit to signify their approval of a married clergy by spitting on the ground. The curé bowed, cleared his throat as if for a harangue, and began again. “I am the servant of the nation, she is the servant of the nation, and this infant is our gift to the nation.” With a deprecatory wave of the hand he turned towards the two children, who immediately tried to escape from his eye and to hide behind the woman’s skirt. “They were my protests some time since against an unnatural law, which it has now seemed good to you gentlemen, the fathers of liberty, to remove. _Their_ mother is dead.” Fresh applause followed these words, several of the deputies pressing round to shake hands with the constitutional, and to gaze curiously at the girl, who throughout kept her eyes fixed upon the child in her arms, and, but for the rising color in her pale cheeks, seemed unconscious of the babble of voices round her, and of the sentiments, not always too delicately expressed, which must have reached her ears. After some moments of clamour, which was increased rather than lessened by fresh ringing of the bell, and by the cries of the ushers, the President succeeded in intimating that the curé should proceed with his story.