And M. Lantaigne, dismissed, perceived that he had not been able to say a single word about the important business on which he had come. But, with the echoes of his own words all round him, full of his learning and his application of it, and much flattered, he descended the grand staircase still turning over in his own mind the matter of the suicide of Saint-Exupère and the urgent need for the purification of the parish church. Outside he was still thinking of it. As he was descending the winding street of the Tintelleries, he met the curé of Saint-Exupère, the venerable M. Laprune, who, standing in front of cooper Lenfant’s shop, was examining the corks. His wine had been turning sour, and this deterioration he attributed to the defective way in which his bottles were corked. “It is deplorable,” he murmured, “deplorable!” “And your suicide?” demanded Abbé Lantaigne. At this question the worthy curé of Saint-Exupère opened his full, round eyes and asked in astonishment: “What suicide?” “The man who hanged himself in Saint-Exupère, the miserable suicide whom you found this morning in the porch of your church.” M. Laprune, terrified, wondering from what he had just heard, whether he or M. Lantaigne had gone mad, replied that he had found no one hanged. “What!” replied M. Lantaigne, surprised in his turn, “wasn’t a man found this morning hanged in the porch of a door on the epistle side!” In sign of denial, the vicar twice revolved on his shoulders a face whereon shone the sacred truth. Abbé Lantaigne now looked like a man taken with giddiness: “But it was the Cardinal-Archbishop who has just told me himself that you found a man hanged in your church!” “Oh!” replied M. Laprune, suddenly reassured, “Monseigneur wanted to amuse himself. He loves a jest. He is a capital hand at it, and knows how to keep within the bounds of seemliness. He has so much wit!” But Abbé Lantaigne, raising heavenwards his fiery, sombre glance, exclaimed: “The Archbishop has deceived me! This man will, then, never speak the truth, save when on the steps of the altar, taking the consecrated host in his hands, he pronounces the words: _Domine, non sum dignus_!” VI