nd express their delight that any one
should believe them to love souls, if they could but have a chance of
selling them; and the devil, who was once supposed to deal in that
commodity, would be very welcome among us. And as for the _bon
Dieu--pouff!_ that was an affair of the grandmothers--_le bon Dieu c'est
l'argent_. This is their creed. I was very near the beginning of my
official year as Maire when my attention was called to these matters as
I have described above. A man may go on for years keeping quiet
himself--keeping out of tumult, religious or political--and make no
discovery of the general current of feeling; but when you are forced to
serve your country in any official capacity, and when your eyes are
opened to the state of affairs around you, then I allow that an
inexperienced observer might well cry out, as my wife did, 'What will
become of the world?' I am not prejudiced myself--unnecessary to say
that the foolish scruples of the women do not move me. But the devotion
of the community at large to this pursuit of gain-money without any
grandeur, and pleasure without any refinement--that is a thing which
cannot fail to wound all who believe in human nature. To be a
millionaire--that, I grant, would be pleasant. A man as rich as Monte
Christo, able to do whatever he would, with the equipage of an English
duke, the palace of an Italian prince, the retinue of a Russian
noble--he, indeed, might be excused if his money seemed to him a kind of
god. But Gros-Jean, who lays up two sous at a time, and lives on black
bread and an onion; and Jacques, whose _grosse piece_ but secures him
the headache of a drunkard next morning--what to them could be this
miserable deity? As for myself, however, it was my business, as Maire
of the commune, to take as little notice as possible of the follies
these people might say, and to hold the middle course between the
prejudices of the respectable and the levities of the foolish. With
this, without more, to think of, I had enough to keep all my faculties
employed.

THE NARRATIVE OF M. LE MAIRE CONTINUED: BEGINNING OF THE LATE REMARKABLE
EVENTS.

I do not attempt to make out any distinct connection between the simple
incidents above recorded, and the extraordinary events that followed. I
have related them as they happened; chiefly by way of showing the state
of feeling in the city, and the sentiment which pervaded the
community--a sentiment, I fear, too common in my country. I ne