than it is at a ball or the opera in our day; and do not strong
emotions invariably bring women back to love? By dint of mingling with
life and grasping it in all its acts and interests, religion had made
itself a sharer of all virtues, the accomplice of all vices. Religion
had passed into science, into politics, into eloquence, into crimes,
into the flesh of the sick man and the poor man; it mounted thrones;
it was everywhere. These semi-learned observations will serve, perhaps,
to vindicate the truth of this study, certain details of which may
frighten the perfected morals of our age, which are, as everybody
knows, a trifle straitlaced.

At the moment when the chanting ceased and the last notes of the
organ, mingling with the vibrations of the loud "A-men" as it issued
from the strong chests of the intoning clergy, sent a murmuring echo
through the distant arches, and the hushed assembly were awaiting the
beneficent words of the archbishop, a burgher, impatient to get home,
or fearing for his purse in the tumult of the crowd when the
worshippers dispersed, slipped quietly away, at the risk of being
called a bad Catholic. On which, a nobleman, leaning against one of
the enormous columns that surround the choir, hastened to take
possession of the seat abandoned by the worthy Tourainean. Having done
so, he quickly hid his face among the plumes of his tall gray cap,
kneeling upon the chair with an air of contrition that even an
inquisitor would have trusted.

Observing the new-comer attentively, his immediate neighbors seemed to
recognize him; after which they returned to their prayers with a
certain gesture by which they all expressed the same thought,--a
caustic, jeering thought, a silent slander. Two old women shook their
heads, and gave each other a glance that seemed to dive into futurity.