of whose iron hand he spoke as if it were that of some gendarme
charged with maintaining the peace of the world. Everybody was aware that
there was some diplomatic understanding between the Bishop and the
Minister, some secret pact or other whereby both satisfied their passion
for authority, their craving to insinuate themselves into everything and
reign supreme; and thus when the spectators saw Monferrand smiling in his
somewhat sly, jovial way, they also exchanged smiles.

"Ah!" muttered Massot, who had remained near Duthil, "how amused old
Justus Steinberger would be, if he were here to see his granddaughter
marrying the last of the Quinsacs!"

"But these marriages are quite the thing, quite the fashion, my dear
fellow," the deputy replied. "The Jews and the Christians, the
_bourgeois_ and the nobles, do quite right to come to an understanding,
so as to found a new aristocracy. An aristocracy is needed, you know, for
otherwise we should be swept away by the masses."

None the less Massot continued sneering at the idea of what a grimace
Justus Steinberger would have made if he had heard Monseigneur Martha. It
was rumoured in Paris that although the old Jew banker had ceased all
intercourse with his daughter Eve since her conversion, he took a keen
interest in everything she was reported to do or say, as if he were more
than ever convinced that she would prove an avenging and dissolving agent
among those Christians, whose destruction was asserted to be the dream of
his race. If he had failed in his hope of overcoming Duvillard by giving
her to him as a wife, he doubtless now consoled himself with thinking of
the extraordinary fortune to which his blood had attained, by mingling
with that of the harsh, old-time masters of his race, to whose corruption
it gave a finishing touch. Therein perhaps lay that final Jewish conquest
of the world of which people sometimes talked.

A last triumphal strain from the organ brought the ceremony to an end;
whereupon the two families and the witnesses passed into the sacristy,
where the acts were signed. And forthwith the great congratulatory
procession commenced.

The bride and bridegroom at last stood side by side in the lofty but
rather dim room, panelled with oak. How radiant with delight was Camille
at the thought that it was all over, that she had triumphed and married
that handsome man of high lineage, after wresting him with so much
difficulty from one and all, her mother es