One summer day in that year, M. Guitrel, according to custom, mounted the goldsmith’s stairs, and found M. Worms-Clavelin puffing away merrily in the shop. For the day before the _préfet_ had succeeded in getting his candidate, a cattle-breeder, and young turn-coat royalist, returned; and he was counting on the approval of the minister, who secretly preferred the new to the old republicans as being less exacting and more humble. In the elation of his boisterous satisfaction, he slapped the priest on the shoulder: “Monsieur l’abbé, what we want is many priests like you, enlightened, tolerant, free from prejudices—for you haven’t any prejudices, not you!—priests who recognise the needs of the present day and the requirements of a democratic society. If the episcopate, if the French clergy would only catch the progressive yet conservative sentiments that the Republic professes, they would still have a fine part to play.” Then, amidst the smoke of his big cigar, he expounded ideas on religion which testified to an ignorance that filled M. Guitrel with inward dismay. The _préfet_, however, declared himself to be more Christian than many Christians, and in the language of the masonic lodge he extolled the moral teaching of Jesus, while he rejected indiscriminately local superstitions and fundamental dogmas, the needles thrown into the piscina of Saint Phal by marriageable girls, and the real presence in the Eucharist. M. Guitrel, an easy-going soul, but incapable of yielding a point as to dogma, stammered out: “One must make a distinction, monsieur _le préfet_, one must make a distinction.” In order to make a diversion, he drew out from a pocket of his great-coat a roll of parchment which he opened on the counter. It was a large page of plain-chant, with Gothic text under the four-line divisions, with rubrics and a decorated initial. The _préfet_ fixed his great, lamp-globe eyes on the page. Rondonneau junior, stretching out his rosy bald head, said: “The miniature in the initial is rather fine. It’s Saint Agatha, isn’t it?” “The martyrdom of Saint Agatha,” said M. Guitrel. “Here are seen the executioners torturing the breasts of the saint.” And he added in a voice which flowed as sweetly as thick syrup: “According to authentic records, such was in fact the torment inflicted on Saint Agatha of blessed memory by the proconsul. A page from an antiphonary, Monsieur _le préfet_—a trifle, a mere trifle, which perhaps will find a little niche in the collections of Madame Worms-Clavelin, so devoted to our Christian antiquities. This page gives us a fragment of the proper of the saint.” And he deciphered the Latin text, marking the tonic accent energetically: “_Dum torqueretur beata Agata in mamillâ graviter dixit ad judicem: ‘Impie, crudelis et dire tyranne, non es confusus amputare in feminâ quod ipse in matre suxisti? Ego habeo mamillas integras intus in animâ quas Domino consecravi.’_”[D]