When he appeared again, his friend saw that he was dressed in a long, severe, black frock-coat, which seemed to have the drollery of a disguise. With his head crowned by a rusty opera-hat of prodigious height, he hastily gulped down his coffee, mumbled a grace and slipped out. Leaning over the stair-rail, Abbé Le Génil shouted to him: “Don’t ring when you come in, or you’ll wake Nanette. You’ll find the key under the mat. One moment, Guitrel, I know where you’re going. You old Quintilian, you, you’re just going to take an elocution lesson.” Through the damp fog, Abbé Guitrel followed the quays along by the river, passed the bridge of Saint-Pères, crossed the Place du Carrousel, unnoticed by the indifferent passers-by, who scarcely took the trouble even to glance at his huge hat. Finally he halted under the Tuscan porch of the Comédie-Française. He carefully read the playbill in order to make sure that the arrangements had not been changed, and that _Andromaque_ and the _Malade Imaginaire_ would be presented. Then he asked at the second pay-box for a pit ticket. The narrow seats behind the empty stalls were already almost filled when he sat down and opened an old newspaper, not to read, but to keep himself in countenance, while he listened to the talk going on around him. He had a quick ear, and it was always by the ear that he observed, just as M. Worms-Clavelin listened with his mouth. His neighbours were shop-hands and artists’ assistants who had obtained seats through friendship with a scene-shifter or a dresser. It is a little world of simple-minded folk, keenly bent on sight-seeing, very well satisfied with themselves, and busied with bets and bicycles. The younger members are peaceful enough in reality, although they assume a jaunty military air, being automatically democratic and republican, but conservative in their jokes about the President of the Republic. As Abbé Guitrel caught the words that flew hither and thither all round him, words which revealed this frame of mind, he thought of the fancies cherished by Abbé Lantaigne, who still dreamt, in his hermit-like seclusion, of bringing such a class as this back to obedience to monarchy and priestcraft. Behind his paper Abbé Guitrel chuckled at the idea. “These Parisians,” thought he, “are the most adaptable people in the world. To the provincial mind they are quite incomprehensible, but would to God that the republicans and freethinkers of the diocese of Tourcoing were cut out on the same model! But the spirit of Northern France is as bitter as the wild hops of its plains. And in my diocese I shall find myself placed with violent Socialists on one side and fervid Catholics on the other.”