Salvan sank into his arm-chair in front of his writing-table with an expression of despairing anguish on his countenance. And silence fell while Marc walked slowly to and fro, overwhelmed by that recapitulation of opinions which he himself fully shared. At last, however, he stopped, saying: 'All the same, we must come to a decision, and what shall we do? Let us suppose that this iniquitous trial takes place: Simon cannot be condemned, it would be too monstrous! And, surely, we shall not remain with our arms folded. When this terrible blow falls on poor David he will want to act. What do you advise us to do?' 'Ah, my friend!' cried Salvan, 'how willingly I would be the first to act, if you could give me the means! You readily understand--do you not?--that in the person of that unfortunate Simon, it is the secular schoolmaster whom they are pursuing and whom they want to crush. They regard our dear training school as a nursery of godless, unpatriotic men, and they are eager to destroy it. For them I am a kind of Satan, engendering atheist missionaries, to ruin whom has long been their dream. What a triumph for the Church gang if one of our former pupils should ascend the scaffold, convicted of an infamous crime! Ah, my dear college, my poor house, which I should like to see so useful, so great, so necessary for the destinies of the country, through what a terrible time will it now have to pass!' All Salvan's ardent faith in the good work he did was manifest in his fervid words. Originally a schoolmaster, then an Elementary Inspector, a militant with a clear mind devoted to knowledge and progress, he had given himself, on his appointment as Director of the Training College, to one sole mission--that of preparing efficient schoolmasters ready to champion experimental science and freed from the bonds of Rome--men who would at last teach Truth to the people and make it capable of practising Liberty, Justice, and Peace. Therein lay the whole future of the nation--the future indeed of all mankind. 'We shall all group ourselves around you,' said Marc, quivering; 'we will not suffer you to be stopped in your work, the most urgent and loftiest of all at the present time!'