His enemies pursued him even into the sacred precincts of the Senate, where his misfortunes gave him an air of still greater dignity, for he had once before been in difficulties and even actually on the verge of ruin. This came about through a mistake made by a Keeper of the Seals who was not a member of the syndicate and who had rashly handed him over into the astonished hands of justice. Neither the honourable M. Laprat-Teulet, nor his examining judge, nor his barrister, nor the Public Prosecutor, nor the Keeper of the Seals himself, was capable of foreseeing, or even understanding, the cause of those sudden partial cleavages in the machine of government, those catastrophes, farcical as the collapse of a platform at a show and terrible as the outcome of what the orator called immanent justice, catastrophes which sometimes hurl the most respected statesmen from their seats in both Chambers. M. Laprat-Teulet felt a melancholy surprise at his fate and he scorned to give any explanation to the authorities, but the number and splendour of his connections saved him. A plea that there was not sufficient cause for prosecution was interposed. At first Laprat-Teulet accepted it with humble gratitude, and next he bore it into the official world as a regular certificate of innocence. “Almighty God,” said Madame Laprat-Teulet, who was pious, “Almighty God has been very merciful to my husband, for to him He has granted the stay of proceedings he so much desired.” It is matter of common knowledge that Madame Laprat-Teulet was so grateful that she had a votive-offering hung up in the chapel of Saint-Antoine, a marble slab bearing the following inscription: “From a Christian wife, in gratitude for an unhoped-for blessing.” This stay of proceedings reassured Laprat-Teulet’s political friends, the crowd of ex-ministers and big officials who had shared with him, not only the time of struggle, but the fruitful years, who had known both the seven lean kine and the seven fat kine. This stay was a safeguard, or at any rate was regarded as such. It could be relied upon for several years to come. Then suddenly, by a stroke of bad luck, by one of those ill-omened and unforeseen accidents that come secretly and from underneath, like sudden leaks in rotten vessels, without any political or moral reason, in the full glory of his honours, this old servant of the democracy, this heir of its achievements whom M. Worms-Clavelin had instanced only the night before in the comitia as a shining light to the whole department, this man of order and progress, this defender of capital and opponent of clericalism, this intimate friend of ex-ministers and ex-presidents, this Senator Laprat-Teulet, this man, though exculpated on the former occasion, was sent to prison with a batch of members of parliament. And the local paper announced in large type: “A Senator at Mazas. Arrest of M. Laprat-Teulet.” M. Bergeret, being a man of delicacy, turned the paper round on the back of the seat.