'When this happened,' said a citizen of Amiens to me, 'and M. Petit was thus put in charge of the rights and the property of the Sisters, it had been perfectly well known for ten years that, by the Parliamentary Inquest of 1871 into the story of the Commune of Paris, M. Petit had been proved to be the founder at Amiens of the secret society known as the "International," and yet he was never prosecuted, and he is now a senator of the Republic. How do you expect honest people, who respect the ordinary laws of order and civilisation, to support a Republic which accepts and promotes the members of such a society?
'On October 2, 1880, this remarkable mayor went in person with a locksmith and some others to the communal girls' school of St.-Leu, then managed by the Sisters. The Sisters had been already that day notified to leave the school-buildings "the next day." M. Petit ordered them to go out immediately. They showed the notification and declined to go till the next day. The curate of St.-Leu, with his vicar and with a member of the board of Churchwardens, came up and protested against this invasion of the school. "Show me the documents proving this house to be the property of the municipality," said the curate. M. Petit showed no documents, but demanded the keys. The curate refused to give them up. M. Petit ordered his locksmith to pick the locks, which was done, and then turning to the curate shouted out, "As for you, if you are here when the commissary comes, I will have you turned out by force." Upon this the curate, a venerable old man, withdrew.
'From the school of St.-Leu our local Robespierrot drove to the girls' school of St.-Jacques, sprang out of the municipal coach (paid for by the public treasury), dashed into the house, and seated himself without a word.
'One of the Sisters asked him civilly what he wished. "I wish you to get out of this house," he replied, "We cannot possibly leave in this way," answered a Sister who has for years devoted herself to this work. "I have nothing to say to you," he cried; "I want the Superior." The Superior quietly came and informed the mayor that the church officers had told her not to leave, excepting under force. "Very well, you shall have force! If you are not all out of here by Tuesday, I will put you all into the street!"
'Now observe the consequences to the taxpayer of Amiens! The Church of St.-Leu, as it happens, owned the greater part of the school-buildings. The church began proceedings against the city, and in August 1881, the tribunal ordered the city to give up the buildings seized by this adventurous mayor, and to withdraw its lay teachers. The upshot was that the performances of M. Petit, in one way or another—although M. Goblet, then in the ministry at Paris, came to the rescue of his demagogic ally—cost the taxpayers, in round numbers, some fifty thousand francs. Now you see why the laicising Republicans are so anxious to shake the whole system of the French magistracy. There may be judges at Berlin. It is not convenient there should be judges in Republican France!'
This recalled to me what I heard the other day at Calais about the functionary decorated at Bapaume by President Carnot, because the tribunal had given a decision against him in a case raised by certain Christian Brothers whom he had unlawfully put out of property which, under the law, belonged to them.
'You think that a remarkable case!' said the Picard friend to whom I mentioned it. 'It is an everyday affair. Wait a minute! Let me show you the documents in regard to a performance of our worthy mayor and senator, which throws President Carnot into the shade. They are as amusing, too, as they are instructive, and I will give you copies of them which you may use as you like. You tell me people in England and America have no idea of what is going on in France? I assure you that people in France who know what is going on around them, have no idea of what it all means, or of what it must lead to in the end.
'Sometimes I think we were so stunned as a nation by the invasion and the Commune that we are still staggering about like a man knocked on the head in a dark road.
'But let me tell you the tale of M. Petit and Mademoiselle Colombel. Mademoiselle Colombel was a lay teacher at the head of one of our schools, the school of the Petit St.-Jean. I don't quite see, by the way,' he observed, 'why M. Petit and his squad have not changed the names of these schools. In Paris, you know, they had the courage to change the name of one of the great lyceums into the Lyceum Lakanal. To be sure it didn't stay changed very long, for even Paris—which suffers one of its boulevards to commemorate that wretched creature Victor Noir—wouldn't stand Lakanal. But to infect the minds of children with the names of little Saints—surely this is a monstrous thing! Well, Mademoiselle Colombel lost her temper one day, and tried to find it about the person of one of her little pupils, with slaps, and pinches, and other caresses of the kind. She was brought up before the police for it, and sentenced to pay a small fine with costs. She appealed, but the court confirmed the sentence of the police magistrate, who had acted strictly within the law. What followed? This was in May 1885. Mdlle. Colombel declared herself to be a persecuted martyr of "laicisation," and in that capacity called upon the mayor, M. Petit, for aid and comfort. I believe they were old allies in the sacred cause. Be this as it may, the mayor made himself her champion against the magistrate, and wrote her, for public use, this letter. Pray print it. It is a great thing for Amiens to possess a mayor, and for France to possess a senator, who can write such a letter. It ought to have been sent to the Exposition.
'"Amiens, May 1885.
'"Madame,—On the strength of calumnious imputations fomented by an Ulysses who could not console himself for the departure of Calypso, and complacently listened to, you have been prosecuted for cruelty to your pupils.
'"After an inquiry as long and as voluminous as if the matter at issue had been a case for the Assize Court, this intrigue came to a miserable end before a simple police tribunal. From the moment, when, through a singular sort of suspicion about your natural judges, you were removed from the disciplinary action of your superiors, without any preliminary inquiry made by them, and, indeed, without apprising them of the matter, you should have been taken before the Courts. Nobody seemed to understand this, so you were condemned by default to pay a fine, trifling indeed, but so imposed as to take from you the right of appeal. Be this as it may, since some of the law officers of the Republic are ready to revive against the lay instructors of our schools, the methods of the law officers of the Empire, it is well your colleagues should know that, whilst I am at the head of the municipal administration of Amiens, they shall not be given over defenceless to the rancour of the clerical world, its dupes, or its accomplices. I have therefore the honour to inform you that I not only relieve you from all the costs of your case, but that, in order to soothe the trouble it may have caused you, I grant you an indemnity of one hundred francs!
Against the sentence which condemned you put this proof of esteem and sympathy. Honest people and Republicans will think this testimony at least as good as any other. Accept, Madame, the assurances of my most distinguished consideration.
'"The Mayor of Amiens,
'"Frédéric Petit."