'I do not like such jesting,' said I. 'The dead are very dead and will
not disturb anybody, but even the prejudices of respectable persons
ought to be respected. A ribald like Jacques counts for nothing, but I
did not expect this from you.'

'What would you, M. le Maire?' he said, with a shrug of his shoulders.
'We are made like that. I respect prejudices as you say. My wife is a
good woman, she prays for two--but me! How can I tell that Jacques is
not right after all? A _grosse pièce_ of a hundred sous, one sees that,
one knows what it can do--but for the other!' He thrust up one shoulder
to his ear, and turned up the palms of his hands.

'It is our duty at all times to respect the convictions of others,' I
said, severely; and passed on to my own house, having no desire to
encourage discussions at the street corner. A man in my position is
obliged to be always mindful of the example he ought to set. But I had
not yet done with this phrase, which had, as I have said, caught my ear
and my imagination. My mother was in the great _salle_ of the
_rez-de-chausée,_ as I passed, in altercation with a peasant who had
just brought us in some loads of wood. There is often, it seems to me, a
sort of _refrain_ in conversation, which one catches everywhere as one
comes and goes. Figure my astonishment when I heard from the lips of my
good mother the same words with which that good-for-nothing Jacques
Richard had made the profession of his brutal faith. 'Go!' she cried, in
anger; 'you are all the same. Money is your god. _De grosses pièces_,
that is all you think of in these days.'

'_Eh, bien,_ madame,' said the peasant; 'and if so, what then? Don't you
others, gentlemen and ladies, do just the same? What is there in the