'Wait a moment! Let me complete the picture of our model Picard Republican senator for you. The Comte de Chassepot told you the story, did he not, of the Calvary in the cemetery of the Madeleine? Yes. But he did not show you the correspondence about it between the bishop and this charlatan of twopenny Atheism? No? Well it is a tit-bit, and I give it to you! Petit sent his order to the keeper of the cemetery of the Madeleine in November 1880, to raze the cross, saw off the arms, and detach from it the image of Christ. He was then, observe, not really mayor of Amiens, but only mayor by reason of the refusal of his senior to serve in the office. 'The work was done at night. The cross was destroyed. The image of the Saviour was thrown into a shed. 'Two days afterwards, the Bishop of Amiens wrote this letter to the Prefect of the Somme, Spuller, the same person who is now--heaven save the mark!--Minister of Foreign Affairs of the French Republic! '"Amiens: Nov. 12, 1880. '"Mr. Prefect,--A most deplorable incident--indeed a grave scandal--has just taken place at the cemetery of the Madeleine, and is exciting, with too much reason, the strongest and most painful feelings among the people of Amiens. '"The figure of our Saviour Christ, set up there in very special circumstances, and with a solemn ceremony in which more than 30,000 spectators took part, was clandestinely thrown down and taken away the night before last. It is impossible for me to imagine that the authorities can have ordered such a thing to be done. '"I must request you, Mr. Prefect, to order an inquiry to be made into this inexplicable affair, and to cause the authors of the act to be prosecuted according to law. Please accept the assurance of my respectful regard. '"[Illustration] AIME VICTOR-FRANCIS, '"Bishop of Amiens." 'To this letter, written by the highest ecclesiastical authority of the chief city of his prefecture--will you believe it?--M. Spuller, who is after all not a perfectly illiterate person like Petit, actually made no reply! 'But the cotton-velvet bagman of blasphemy three days afterwards, reading in the papers the letter of Bishop Guilbert, burst into print with this incredible but most instructive effusion, addressed to his friend the Prefect: '"Amiens: Nov. 15, 1880. '"Mr. Prefect,--I find this morning in the journals of the bishopric the text of a letter addressed to you by the Bishop of Amiens in regard to the suppression of the Catholic emblem placed at the entrance of the general cemetery of the Madeleine.