“Meanwhile the honourable M. Laprat-Teulet is at Mazas! He was taken there on the morning of the very day on which he was due here to preside over the Social Defence League banquet. This arrest, which was carried out on the day after the vote that authorised the prosecution, has taken M. Worms-Clavelin completely by surprise. He had arranged for M. Dellion to preside at the banquet, since his integrity, guaranteed by inherited wealth and by forty years of commercial prosperity, is universally respected. Though the _préfet_ deplores the fact that the most prominent officials of the Republic are continually subject to suspicion, yet, at the same time, he congratulates himself on the loyalty of their constituents, who remain true to the established system, even when it seems the general wish to bring it into disrepute. He declares, in fact, that parliamentary episodes such as the one which has just occurred, even when they follow on others of the same kind, leave the working-classes of the department absolutely indifferent. And M. Worms-Clavelin is quite right: he is by no means exaggerating the phlegmatic calm of these classes, which seem no longer capable of surprise. The herd of nobodies read in the newspapers that Senator Laprat-Teulet has been sent to solitary confinement; they manifest no surprise at the news, and they would have received with the same phlegm the information that he had been sent as ambassador to some foreign court. It is even probable that, if the arm of justice sends him back to parliamentary life, M. Laprat-Teulet will sit next year on the budget commission. There is, at any rate, no doubt whatever that at the end of his sentence he will be re-elected.” The abbé here interrupted M. Bergeret. “There, Monsieur Bergeret, you put your finger on the weak point; there you make the void to echo. The public is becoming used to the spectacle of wrong-doing and is losing the power to discriminate between good and evil. That’s where the danger lies. Now one public scandal after another arises, only to be at once hushed up. Under the Monarchy and the Empire there was such a thing as public opinion; there is none to-day. This nation, once so high-spirited and generous, has suddenly become incapable of either hatred or love, of either admiration or scorn.”