erious air, stood with his back
to the fireplace and looked alternately at the husband and wife.

"My friends," he said, "nothing is really lost, for the minister and I
are faithful to you. Dutocq simply chose between two powers the one he
thought strongest. He has served the court and the Grand Almoner; he
has betrayed me. But that is in the order of things; a politician never
complains of treachery. Nevertheless, Baudoyer will be dismissed as
incapable in a few months; no doubt his protectors will find him a
place,--in the prefecture of police, perhaps,--for the clergy will not
desert him."

From this point des Lupeaulx went on with a long tirade about the Grand
Almoner and the dangers the government ran in relying upon the
church and upon the Jesuits. We need not, we think, point out to the
intelligent reader that the court and the Grand Almoner, to whom
the liberal journals attributed an enormous influence under the
administration, had little really to do with Monsieur Baudoyer's
appointment. Such petty intrigues die in the upper sphere of great
self-interests. If a few words in favor of Baudoyer were obtained by
the importunity of the curate of Saint-Paul's and the Abbe Gaudron, they
would have been withdrawn immediately at a suggestion from the minister.
The occult power of the Congregation of Jesus (admissible certainly as
confronting the bold society of the "Doctrine," entitled "Help yourself
and heaven will help you,") was formidable only through the imaginary
force conferred on it by subordinate powers who perpetually threatened
each other with its evils. The liberal scandal-mongers delighted in
representing the Grand Almoner and the whole Jesuitical Chapter as
political, administrative, civil, and military giants. Fear creates
bugbears. At this crisis Baudoyer firmly believed in the said Chapter,
little aware that the only Jesuits who had put him where he now was sat
by his own fireside, and in the Cafe Themis playing dominoes.

At certain epochs in history certain powers appear, to whom all evils
are attributed, though at the same time their genius is denied; they
form an efficient argument in the mouth of fools. Just as Monsieur de
Talleyrand was supposed to hail all events of whatever kind with a bon
mot, so in these days of the Restoration the clerical party had the
credit of doing and undoing everything. Unfortunately, it did and undid
nothing. Its influence was not wielded by a Cardinal Richelieu or