Another thing known to Marc was the increasing power of the Clerical party, which seemed likely to conquer the whole region. For ten years the little community of Capuchins established in the old convent, a part of which it had surrendered to the Brothers of the Christian Schools, had carried on the worship of St. Antony of Padua with ever-increasing audacity, and also with such great success that the profits were enormous.[1] While the Brothers, on their side, derived advantage from this success, which brought them many pupils and thus increased the prosperity of the schools, the Capuchins worked their chapel as one may work a distillery, and sent forth from it every kind of moral poison. The Saint stood on a golden altar, ever decked with flowers and ablaze with lights, collection boxes appeared on all sides, and a commercial office was permanently installed in the sacristy, where the procession of clients lasted from morn till night. The Saint did not merely find lost things,--his specialty in the early days of his _cultus_,--he had extended his business. For a few francs he undertook to enable the dullest youths to pass their examinations, to render doubtful business affairs excellent, to exonerate the rich scions of patriotic families from military service, to say nothing of performing a multitude of other equally genuine miracles, such as healing the sick and the maimed, and according a positive protection against ruin and death, in the last respect going indeed so far as to resuscitate a young girl who had expired two days previously. Naturally enough, as each new story circulated, more and more money flowed in, and the business spread from the _bourgeois_ and shopkeepers of Reactionary Maillebois to the workmen of Republican Maillebois, whom the poison ended by infecting. [Footnote 1: The Protestant reader may be informed that this Saint (1195-1231) was a Portuguese Franciscan, famous for the eloquence of his sermons. The practices of which M. Zola speaks are not inventions. The so-called worship of St. Antony has become widespread in France of recent years. Such is superstition!--_Trans._]