M. Mazure hastily thrust _Le Phare_ into his pocket and looked askance at the voluminous foreign journal, wherein he could claim no little thing of his own. M. Bergeret accepted it and applied himself as conscientiously to construing the text as though it were one of those books of the Æneid from which he was compiling his “Virgilius Nauticus.” “The manners of our neighbours,” he presently said, “are as usual more interesting to a student of human nature than their politics. I read that they are seriously concerned about the ethical teaching of their kinematography, and they have appointed a film censor, the deputy T. P. O’Connor.” “I think I have heard speak of him over there,” interrupted M. de Terremondre; “they call him, familiarly, Tépé.” “A mysterious name,” said M. Bergeret, “but manifestly not abusive, and that of itself is a high honour. History records few nicknames that do not revile. And if the deputy O’Connor, or Tépé, can successfully acquit himself of his present functions he will be indeed an ornament to history, a saint of the Positivist Calendar, which is no doubt less glorious than the Roman, but more exclusive.” “Talking of Roman saints,” broke in M. Mazure, “the Abbé Lantaigne has been spreading it abroad that you called Joan of Arc a mascot.” “By way of argument merely,” said M. Bergeret, “not of epigram. The Abbé and I were discussing theology, about which I never permit myself to be facetious.” “But what of Tépé and his censorial functions?” asked M. de Terremondre. “They are extremely delicate,” replied M. Bergeret, “and offer pitfalls to a censor with a velleity for nice distinctions. Thus I read that this one has already distinguished, and distinguished _con allegrezza_, between romantic crime and realistic crime, between murder in Mexico and murder in Mile End (which I take to be a suburb of London). He has distinguished between ‘guilty love’ and ‘the pursuit of lust.’ He has distinguished between a lightly-clad lady swimming and the same lady at rest. Surely a man gifted with so exquisite a discrimination is wasted in rude practical life. He should have been a metaphysician.” “Well, I,” confessed M. de Terremondre, “am no metaphysician, and it seems to me murder is murder all the world over.”