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,

'"FREDERIC PETIT."'

'Ulysses bewailing the departure of Calypso is charming, is it not?'
said my friend. 'M. Petit is a cotton-velvet manufacturer, and his
classics are cotton classics. But what do you say to the applause of
"honest people" acclaiming a mayor who puts his hand into the public
treasury and makes a present out of it to soothe the injured feelings of
a schoolmistress fined by a public tribunal for ill-treating her pupils?
Can you ask for a more flagrant illustration of the state to which this
Republic is bringing our public services? And the mayor who wrote this
letter, and took this money out of the