'In this region the Empire is still very popular, thanks mainly to this. No! outside of the influence of the freemasons, which will be exerted against him through the pressure put upon the friends and families of the small army of government employés, and will therefore be formidable, what M. de Mandat-Grancey will have most to fear will be not the preference of the people for the Republic—for that, I tell you, does not exist—but the indiscreet zeal of some of the clergy in his behalf.
'It is natural the clergy should wish to be rid of this persecuting gang at Paris, and of these disgusting freemasons—quite natural. But they do not always remember one peculiarity of our peasants. There is a great love for the culte here among our people—a very great love for it; but they do not like to be meddled with in politics by the curés or the priests. They will vote for the curé if the curé lets them alone. But if he bothers them about it they are much more likely to vote against him.
'If Constans knows his business he will tell that freemason Thévenot, the Keeper of the Seals, to let the curés and the clergy do all they feel disposed to do in politics. Pardie, I am not sure he has not already been suborning some of our curés to go into a conservative propaganda!'
'This is my great fear,' he added presently, 'for Soissons in September. We ought to carry that seat. The freemasons mean to make the Republicans accept a most absurd candidate there, as I have told you, and if we can only keep some of our clerical friends quiet, we shall beat him. But we shall see! If the curés hurt us sometimes by their over-zeal, on the other hand the Republican deputies and functionaries help us by making the Republic disreputable in the eyes of serious people, and that in all classes of society.
'Look at the working-men, for example, here in Laon. There are a good many of them who know M. Doumer much better since he became a deputy than they knew him when he was first a candidate!
'The question of the Sociétés Ouvrières is a question which means a good deal for the working-men. M. Doumer would have been well advised had he let it alone. But no! M. Doumer gets himself appointed to draw up a Report of the Chamber of Deputies on this question, with a Project of a Law to supersede, modify, extend the Law of 1867, under which co-operative societies have so far grown up in France.
'The Report and the Project, as finally edited by the aspiring deputy for Laon, a freemason as I have told you, are to be printed by another freemason, the worthy hatter, M. Bugnicourt, at Chauny, who is the chief personage of the Défense Nationale, and all the voters are to see how Brother Doumer devotes himself to the interests of the working classes, at Paris, while other deputies go about amusing themselves with the danseuses du ventre, and the other marvels of the Exposition.
'This is all very well.
'But Brother Doumer, in his desire to pose before the voters of the Aisne as the heaven-born deputy in whom the working-man may put his trust, takes the trouble to make it quite clear that the Republic has done absolutely nothing but appoint committees to sit upon "the great question" of co-operation among the working classes!
'Brother Doumer, as I have told you, was made a deputy in 1888. After taking his seat he was made a member of the Committee which has been conducting an "extra-parliamentary enquiry" on the subject of co-operative societies among working-men for work and for production, and with the question of contracts between employers and working-men for participation in the profits of industrial enterprises.