“Ah!” cried Monseigneur, with a smile, “that good M. Roquette! When I went last year ad limina apostolorum I met M. Roquette for the first time just as he was gaily setting out for the Vatican. A week later I met him in Saint-Peter’s, where he was imbibing the solace that he much needed after being refused the cardinal’s hat.”
“And why,” demanded M. Lantaigne, in a voice that whistled like a whip-lash, “why should the purple have descended on the shoulders of this poor creature, a mediocrity in character, a nonentity in doctrine, whose mental density has made him ridiculous, and whose sole recommendation is that he has sat at table with the President of the Republic at a masonic banquet? Could M. Roquette only rise above himself, he would be astonished at finding himself a bishop. In these times of trial, when a future confronts us pregnant with awful menace as well as with gracious promise, it would be expedient to build up a body of clergy powerful both in character and in scholarship. And in fact, Monseigneur, I come to interview Your Eminence about another Roquette, about another priest who is unfitted to sustain the weight of his great duties. The professor of rhetoric at the high seminary, M. l’abbé Guitrel …”
Monseigneur interrupted with a feigned jest, and asked, with a laugh, whether Abbé Guitrel were in a fair way to become a bishop in his turn.
“What an idea, Monseigneur!” cried Abbé Lantaigne. “If perchance this man were raised to a bishopric, we should behold once more the days of Cautinus, when an unworthy pontiff defiled the see of Saint Martin.”
The Cardinal-Archbishop, curled up in his arm-chair, remarked genially:
“Cautinus, Bishop Cautinus” (it was the first time he had heard the name), “Cautinus who was a successor of Saint Martin. Are you quite sure that this Cautinus behaved as badly as they make out? It is an interesting point in the history of the Gallic Church concerning which I should much like to have the opinion of so learned a man as yourself, Monsieur Lantaigne.”
The head of the high seminary drew himself up.
“The testimony, Monseigneur, of Gregory of Tours is explicit in the passage touching Bishop Cautinus. This successor of the blessed Martin lived in such luxury and robbed the Church of its treasures to such an extent that, at the end of two years of his administration, all the sacred vessels were in the hands of the Jews of Tours. And if I have coupled the name of Cautinus with that of this unhappy M. Guitrel, it is not without reason. M. Guitrel carries off the artistic curios, wood-carvings, or finely chased vessels, which are still to be found in country churches, in the care of ignorant churchwardens, and it is for the benefit of the Jews that he devotes himself to this robbery.”
“For the benefit of the Jews?” demanded Monseigneur. “What is this that you are telling me?”
“For the benefit of the Jews,” returned Abbé Lantaigne, “and to embellish the drawing-rooms of M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin, Jew and freemason. Madame Worms-Clavelin is fond of antiquities. Through the medium of M. Guitrel she has gained possession of the copes treasured for three hundred years in the vestry of the church at Lusancy, and she has, I am told, turned them into seats of the kind called poufs.”