Doulce; he inquired of her:

"Why should you want Chevalier to be blessed by the Church? Personally,
I am a Catholic. With me, it is not a faith, it is a system, and I look
upon it as a duty to participate in all the external practices of
worship. I am on the side of all authorities. I am for the judge, the
soldier, the priest. I cannot therefore be suspected of favouring civil
burials. But I hardly understand why you persist in offering the cure of
Saint-Etienne-du-Mont a dead body which he repudiates. Now why do you
want this unfortunate Chevalier to go to church?"

"Why?" replied Madame Doulce. "For the salvation of his soul and because
it is more seemly."

"What would be seemly," replied Constantin Marc, "would be to obey the
laws of the Church, which excommunicates suicides."

"Monsieur Constantin Marc, have you read _Les Soirees de Neuilly_?"
inquired Pradel, who was an ardent collector of old books and a great
reader. "What, you have not read _Les Soirees de Neuilly_, by Monsieur
de Fongeray? You have missed something. It is a curious book, which can
still be met with sometimes on the quays. It is adorned by a lithograph
of Henry Monnier's, which is, I don't know why, a caricature of
Stendhal. Fongeray is the pseudonym of two Liberals of the Restoration,
Dittmer and Cave. The work consists of comedies and dramas which cannot
be acted; but which contain some most interesting scenes representing
manners and customs. You will read in it how, in the reign of Charles X,
a vicar of one of the Paris churches, the Abbe Mouchaud, would refuse
burial to a pious lady, and would, at all costs, grant it to an atheist.
Madame d'Hautefeuille was religious, but she held some national
property. At her death, she received the ministrations of a Jansenist
priest. For this reason, after her death, the Abbe Mouchaud refused to
receive her into the church in which she had passed her life. At the
same time, in the same parish, Monsieur Dubourg, a big banker, was good
enough to die. In his will he stipulated that he should be borne
straight to the cemetery. 'He is a Catholic,' reflected the Abbe
Mouchaud, 'he belongs to us.' Quickly making a parcel of his stole and
surplice, he rushed off to the dead man's house, administered extreme
unction, and brought him into his church."

"Well," replied Constantin Marc, "that vicar was an excellent
politician. Atheists are not formidable enemies of the Church. They do
not count as adversarie