M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin was not credulous. He only thought of religion from a political point of view. He had inherited no creed from his parents, who were aliens to every superstition, as they were to every land. His soul had sucked none of the nourishment of the past from any soil. He remained empty, colourless, unfettered. Through metaphysical incompetency and the instinctive feeling for action and acquisition, he clung to tangible truth, and in all good faith believed himself to be a positivist. Having but lately drunk his bocks in the cafés at Montmartre in the company of chemists with political opinions, he still preserved a blind trustfulness in scientific methods, which he in his turn extolled in the lodges to the leading spirits among the freemasons. He enjoyed embellishing his political intrigues and administrative expedients with the fair appearance of sociological experiment. And the more useful science was to him the better he appreciated it. “I profess,” said he in all sincerity, “that unquestioning faith in facts which constitutes the scientist, the sociologist.” And it was just because he only believed in facts and because he professed the creed of positivism that the affair of the Sibyl began to worry him.
His private secretary, M. Lacarelle, had said to him: “This young woman has cured a road-mender and a bailiff. These are facts. She has pointed out the place where they would discover a treasure, and they really found in that place a trap-door to the opening of a subterranean passage. That is a fact. She foretold the failure of the vines. That is a fact.”
M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin had the instinct of mockery and a sense of humour, but this word fact exercised a spell over his mind; and it occurred vaguely to his memory that doctors like Charcot had made observations in the hospitals on sick people gifted with extraordinary powers. He remembered certain curious phenomena of hysteria and cases of second sight. He wondered whether Mademoiselle Deniseau were not a sufficiently interesting hysteric patient for her to be handed over to the experts in mental cases, which would rid the town of her.
He thought:
“I might give an official order for the consignment of this girl to an asylum, as in the case of any person whose mental derangement forms a danger to public order and personal safety; but the enemies of the government would squeal like polecats, and I can already hear lawyer Lerond charging me with unlawful committal. The plot must be unravelled, if the clericals of the county town have concocted one. For it is not to be endured that Mademoiselle Deniseau should declare every day, as the mouthpiece of Saint Radegonde, that the Republic is sinking into the mire. I grant that some regrettable deeds have been done. Certain partial changes will force themselves on us, especially in national representation, but, thank God, the government is still strong enough for me to support it.”
X
Abbé Lantaigne, principal of the high seminary, and M. Bergeret, professor of literature, were seated in conversation on a bench on the Mall, according to their custom in summer. On every subject they were opposed in opinion; never were two men more different in mind and character. But they were the only people in the town who took an interest in general ideas. This fellow-feeling united them. While philosophising beneath the quincunxes when the weather was fine, they consoled each other, one for the loneliness of celibacy, the other for the vexations of domestic life; both for their professional cares and for the unpopularity each alike shared.
On this particular day they could see from the bench where they sat the monument of Jeanne d’Arc still shrouded in wrappings. The Maid having once slept a night in the town, at the house of an honest dame called la Gausse, in 189– the municipality, with the concurrence of the State, had caused a monument to be raised to commemorate this stay. This monument, the work of two artists, the one a sculptor and the other an architect, both natives of the district, displayed the Maid fully armed, standing, meditative, on a high pedestal.