[D] “While the blessed Agatha was being cruelly tortured in the breast, she said to the judge: ‘Oh, wicked, cruel, and savage tyrant, art thou not ashamed to mutilate in a woman that with which your mother fed you? Within my soul I have breasts undesecrated which I have sanctified to God.’” The _préfet_, who was a graduate, half understood, and in his desire to appear Gallic, remarked that it was piquant. “Naïve,” answered Abbé Guitrel gently, “naïve.” M. Worms-Clavelin granted that the language of the Middle Ages had, in fact, a certain naïveté. “It has also sublimity,” said M. Guitrel. But the _préfet_ was rather inclined to seek in Church Latin for the piquancy of broad humour, and it was with a sly little laugh of obstinacy that he crammed the parchment into his pocket, with many thanks to his dear Guitrel for this discovery. Then, pushing the Abbé into the window-recess, he whispered in his ear: “My dear Guitrel, when the chance comes, I will do something for you.” V There was one party in the town which openly declared that Abbé Lantaigne, principal of the high seminary, was a priest worthy of a bishopric and fitted to fill the vacant see of Tourcoing honourably, until the time when Monseigneur Charlot’s death should enable him, cross in hand and amethyst on finger, to assume the mitre in the town that had witnessed his labours and his merits. This was the scheme of the venerable M. Cassignol, ex-president in chief, and a State pensioner of twenty-five years’ standing. With these plans were associated M. Lerond, deputy attorney-general at the time of the decrees,[E] now a barrister practising at …, and Abbé de Lalonde, formerly an Army chaplain, and now chaplain to the Dames du Salut. These, belonging to the most respected, but not to the most influential, class in the town, made up practically the whole of Abbé Lantaigne’s party. The head of the high seminary had been invited to dine with M. Cassignol, the chief president, who said to him, in the presence of M. de Lalonde and M. Lerond: [E] The _coup d’état_ of 1851. “Monsieur l’abbé, put yourself forward as a candidate. When it shall come to a choice between Abbé Lantaigne, who has so nobly served both religion and Christian France by pen and tongue, who has protected the oft-betrayed cause of the rights of the French Church within the Catholic Church with the force of his mental endowments and high character, and M. Guitrel, none will have the effrontery to hesitate. And since it seems that this time the honour of supplying a bishop for the town of Tourcoing is to fall to our city, the faithful of the diocese are willing to lose you for a time for the good of the episcopate as well as of Christendom.” And the venerable M. Cassignol, who was now in his eighty-sixth year, added with a smile: “We shall see you again, I have a firm conviction of that. You will come back to us from Tourcoing, monsieur l’abbé.” Abbé Lantaigne had replied: