Emotion then reached a climax. On the day after the discovery of the corner of the copy-slip among Father Philibin's papers, there had come an hour of lassitude and discomfiture among the most ardent supporters of the Church. This time the battle really seemed to be lost, and _Le Petit Beaumontais_ even printed an article in which the conduct of the reverend Jesuit was roundly blamed. But two days later the faction had recovered its self-possession, and the very same newspaper proceeded to canonise theft and falsehood. St. Philibin, hero and martyr, was portrayed amid a setting of palms, and with a halo about his head. A legend likewise arose, showing the reverend Father in a remote convent of the Apennines, surrounded by wild forests. There, wearing a hair-cloth next his skin, he prayed devoutly both by day and by night, and offered himself in sacrifice for the sins of the world. And on the back of the pious little pictures which circulated, showing him on his knees, there was a prayer by repeating which the faithful might gain indulgences. The resounding accusation launched against Brother Gorgias fully restored to the clericals their rageful determination to attack and conquer, convinced as they were that the victory of the Jew would shake the Congregations in a terrible fashion and leave a gaping breach in the very heart of the Church. All the anti-Simonists of former days rose up again, more uncompromising than ever, eager to conquer or to die. And the old battle began afresh on every side; on one hand all the free-minded men who believed in truth and equity and looked to the future, on the other all the reactionaries, the believers in authority, who clung to the past with its God of wrath, and based salvation on priests and soldiers. The Municipal Council of Maillebois again quarrelled about schoolmaster Froment, families were rent asunder, the Brothers' pupils and Marc's stoned one another on the Place de la République after lessons. Then, too, the fine society of Beaumont was utterly upset, such was the feverish anxiety of all who had participated in any way in Simon's trial.