Jeanne had accordingly been baptized at the age of eleven and with the utmost secrecy, because they were then under a radical administration. Since then the Church and the Republic had become more reconciled to each other, but in order to avoid displeasing the bigots of the department, Madame Worms-Clavelin still concealed the fact that her daughter was being educated in a nunnery. Somehow, however, the secret leaked out, and now and then the clerical organ of the department published a paragraph which M. Lacarelle, counsel to the prefecture, blue-pencilled and sent to M. Worms-Clavelin. For instance, M. Worms-Clavelin read: “Is it a fact that the Jewish persecutor whom the freemasons have placed at the head of our departmental administration, in order that he may oppose the cause of God among the faithful, has actually sent his daughter to be educated in a convent?” M. Worms-Clavelin shrugged his shoulders and threw the paper into the waste-paper basket. Two days later the Catholic editor inserted another paragraph, as, after reading the first, one would have prophesied his doing. “I asked whether our Jewish _préfet_, Worms-Clavelin, was really having his daughter educated in a convent. And now that this freemason has, for good reasons of his own, avoided giving me any answer, I will myself reply to my own question. After having had his daughter baptized, this dishonourable Jew sent his daughter to a Catholic place of education. “_Mademoiselle Worms-Clavelin is at Neuilly-sur-Seine, being educated by the Sisters of the Precious Blood._ “What a pleasure it is to witness the sincerity of jesters like these! “A lay, atheistic, homicidal education is good enough for the people who maintain them! Would that our people’s eyes were opened to discern on which side are the Tartuffes!” M. Lacarelle, the counsel to the prefecture, first blue-pencilled the paragraph and then placed the open sheet on the _préfet’s_ desk. M. Worms-Clavelin threw it into his waste-paper basket and warned the meddlesome papers not to engage in discussions of that sort. Hence this little episode was soon forgotten and fell into the bottomless pit of oblivion, into that black darkness of night which, after one outburst of excitement, swallows up the shame and the honour, the scandals and the glories of an administration. In view of the wealth and power of the Church, Madame Worms-Clavelin had stuck energetically to her point that Jeanne should be left to these nuns who would train the young girl in good principles and good manners. She modestly sat down, hiding her feet under her dress, like the red, white and blue Virgin of the niche, and holding in her finger-tips by the string the box of chocolates she had brought for Jeanne. A tall girl, looking very lanky in her black dress with the red girdle of the Middle School, burst into the room. “Good morning, mamma!”