Madame Worms-Clavelin begged her daughter anxiously and earnestly not to join her young friends in research work of this kind. Then she flew into a rage: “You are perfectly absurd, Jeanne, for you use words without paying any heed...” Jeanne looked at her in mysterious silence. Then she said suddenly: “Mamma, I must tell you that my drawers are in such a state that they are a positive sight. You know you have never been overwhelmingly interested in the question of linen. I don’t say this as a reproach, for one person goes in for linen, another for dresses, another for jewels. You, mamma, have always gone in for jewels. For my part it’s linen that I’m mad about.... And besides, we’ve just had a nine days’ prayer. I prayed hard both for you and for papa, I can tell you! And, then, I’ve earned four thousand nine hundred and thirty-seven days of indulgence.” XV “I am rather religiously inclined,” said M. de Terremondre, “but I still think that the words spoken in Notre Dame by Père Ollivier were ill advised. And that is the general opinion.” “Of course,” replied M. Lantaigne, “you blame him for having explained this disaster as a lesson given by God against pride and infidelity. You think him wrong in describing the favoured people as being suddenly punished for their faithlessness and rebellion. Ought one, then, to give up attempting to trace a cause for such terrible events?” “There are,” answered M. de Terremondre, “certain conventions which ought to be observed. The mere fact that the head of the State was present made a certain reserve incumbent on him.” “It is true,” said M. Lantaigne, “that this monk actually dared to declare before the President and the ministers of the Republic, and before the rich and powerful, who are either the authors or accomplices of our shame, that France had failed in her age-long vocation, when she turned her back on the Christians of the East who were being massacred by thousands, and, like a coward, supported the Crescent against the Cross. He dared to declare that this once Christian nation had driven the true God from both its schools and its councils. This is the speech that you consider a crime, you, Monsieur de Terremondre, one of the leaders of the Catholic party in our department.” M. de Terremondre protested that he was deeply devoted to the interests of religion, but he still persisted in the opinion he had first held. In the first place, he was not for the Greeks, but for the Turks, or, if he could not go so far as that, he was at least for peace and order. And he knew many Catholics who regarded the Eastern Church with absolute indifference. Ought one, then, to give offence to them by attacking perfectly lawful convictions? It is not incumbent on everyone to be friendly towards Greece. The Pope, for one, is not.