The préfet summed up from out of the cloud of his cigar-smoke.
“Harking back over what has been done is useless. But the new spirit is a spirit of conciliation.”
And again M. Guitrel bowed, while Rondonneau junior bent over his account books his bald head where the flies pitched.
One day, being asked to give her opinion about a vase that the préfet was to present with his own hand to the winner in the race for draught-horses, Madame Worms-Clavelin came to Rondonneau junior’s with her husband. She found M. Guitrel in the jeweller’s office. He made a feint to leave the place. But they begged him to remain. They even consulted him as to the nymphs who formed, by their bending figures, the handles of the cup. The préfet would have preferred them to be Amazons.
“Amazons, doubtless,” murmured the professor of sacred rhetoric.
Madame Worms-Clavelin would have liked centauresses.
“Centauresses, yes, yes,” said the priest; “or rather centaurs.”
Meanwhile Rondonneau junior was holding up the wax model in his fingers in front of the spectators and smiling in admiration.
“Monsieur l’abbé,” asked the préfet, “does the Church always ban the nude in art?”
M. Guitrel replied: