He told the man that he required a servant, and apparently he wanted one with quite unusual qualities, for after ten minutes’ conversation he came out in very low spirits. Then, as he crossed the waiting-room a second time, he caught sight of a woman in a dark corner whom he had not noticed the first time. It was a long, thin shape that he beheld, ageless and sexless, crowned by a bald, bony head, with a forehead set like an enormous sphere on a short nose that seemed nothing but nostril. Through her open mouth her great horse-teeth were visible in all their nakedness, and under her drooping lip there was no chin to speak of. She stayed in her corner, neither moving nor looking, perhaps realising that she would not easily find anyone to hire her, and that others would be taken in preference to her. Yet she seemed quite satisfied with herself and quite easy in her mind. She was dressed like the women of the low-lying, agueish lands, and to her wide-brimmed, knitted hat clung pieces of straw.
For a long time M. Bergeret stood looking at her with saturnine admiration. Then, pointing her out to Deniseau, he said: “The one over there will suit me.”
“Marie?” asked the man in a tone of surprise.
“Marie,” answered M. Bergeret.
XVII
Now that M. Mazure, the archivist, had at last attained to academic honours, he began to regard the government with genial tolerance. But, as he was never happy unless he was at variance with someone, he now turned his wrath against the clericals, and began to denounce the scheming of the bishops. Meeting M. Bergeret in the Place Saint-Exupère, he warned him of the peril threatening from the clerical party.
“Finding it impossible,” said he, “to overturn the Republic, the curés now want to divert it to their own ends.”
“That is the ambition of every party,” answered M. Bergeret, “and the natural result of our democratic institutions, for democracy itself consists entirely in the struggle of parties, since the nation itself is not at one either in sentiments or interests.”