But M. Tabarit’s roving glance had fallen on a great bearded man in cyclist’s dress who was passing along the Mall. This was Eusèbe Boulet, editor in chief of the radical paper _le Phare_. Instantly M. Tabarit bade a hasty good-bye to the professor and the head of the seminary, and hurrying up to the journalist with great strides, wished him good-day. Then, with a face reddened by excitement, he drew some crumpled papers out of his pocket and handed them to him with a hand that trembled. These were rectifications and supplementary communications as to the last moments of young Lecœur. For at the end of his secluded life and humble ministry, a passion for print, a thirst for interviews and articles, had come upon this holy man. It was with something approaching a smile that M. Lantaigne watched the poor old fellow, with his quick, birdlike movements, handing up his scrawls to the radical editor. “Look!” said he to M. Bergeret, “the miasma of this age has even infected a man who was marching deathwards by a path long paved with goodness and virtue. This old fellow, though he is humble and modest about everything else, is craving for notoriety. He yearns to appear in print at any cost, even though it be in the pages of an anti-clerical paper.” Then, vexed at having betrayed one of his own people to the enemy, M. Lantaigne added with a brisk air of indifference: “Not much harm done. It’s absurd, that’s all.” Thereupon, relapsing into silence, he was his own gloomy self once more.