"What can I do for you, Monsieur le Curie?" asked the landlady, as she

reached down from the chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed

with their candles in a row. "Will you take something? A thimbleful of

Cassis*? A glass of wine?"

*Black currant liqueur.

The priest declined very politely. He had come for his umbrella, that

he had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont convent, and after

asking Madame Lefrancois to have it sent to him at the presbytery in the

evening, he left for the church, from which the Angelus was ringing.

When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the

square, he thought the priest's behaviour just now very unbecoming. This

refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy;

all priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days

of the tithe.

The landlady took up the defence of her curie.

"Besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. Last year

he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six

trusses at once, he is so strong."

"Bravo!" said the chemist. "Now just send your daughters to confess to

fellows which such a temperament! I, if I were the Government, I'd have

the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame Lefrancois, every month--a

good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals."

"Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel; you've no religion."

The chemist answered: "I have a religion, my religion, and I even have

more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling.

I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a

Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below

to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't

need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my

pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one

can know Him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the

eternal vault like the ancients. My God! Mine is the God of Socrates, of

Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Beranger! I am for the profession of faith

of the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89! And I can't

admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a

cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies

uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd

in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws,

which prove to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in

turpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them."




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