Marc could not help smiling in spite of his bitter feelings. He continued listening, and heard a group of serious looking men--among whom he recognised Philis, the Municipal Councillor and clerical rival of Mayor Darras--deploring the fact that not a parish of the _arrondissement_ had yet consecrated itself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. That was another clever invention, more dangerous still than the base trafficking in St. Antony of Padua. True, the poorer classes as yet remained indifferent to it, as it lacked the attraction of a miraculous and a gambling element. None the less, there was a grave peril in that idolatrous worship of the Sacred Heart, a real, red, bleeding heart torn away amid a last palpitation, and portrayed like the heart of some animal in a butcher's shop. The endeavour was to make that gory picture the emblem of modern France, to print it in purple, to embroider it in silk and gold on the national flag, so that the whole country might become a mere dependency of the Church which invented that repulsive fetich worship. Here again one found the same manœuvre, the same attempt to lay the grip of priestcraft on the nation, to win over the multitude by means of superstition and legend, in the hope of steeping it once more in ignorance and bondage. And in the case of the Sacred Heart, as in that of St. Antony of Padua, it was particularly the Jesuits who were at work, disorganising the olden Catholicism with their evil power, and reducing religion to a level with the carnal practices of savage tribes. Marc hurried away. He again felt suffocated, he longed for solitude and space. Geneviève, desirous of spending an afternoon with her parents, had accompanied him to Maillebois that Sunday. Madame Duparque, being attacked by gout, was confined to her arm-chair, and had been prevented therefore from attending the ceremony at the chapel. As Marc no longer visited his wife's relations, he had agreed with Geneviève that he would meet her outside the railway station in time for the four o'clock train. It was now scarcely more than three, and so he walked mechanically to the tree-planted square where the railway station stood, and sank upon a bench there amid the solitude. He was still pondering, still absorbed in a great, decisive, mental battle.