motions
invariably bring women back to love? By dint of mingling with life and
grasping it in all its acts and interests, religion had made itself a
sharer of all virtues, the accomplice of all vices. Religion had passed
into science, into politics, into eloquence, into crimes, into the flesh
of the sick man and the poor man; it mounted thrones; it was everywhere.
These semi-learned observations will serve, perhaps, to vindicate the
truth of this study, certain details of which may frighten the perfected
morals of our age, which are, as everybody knows, a trifle straitlaced.

At the moment when the chanting ceased and the last notes of the organ,
mingling with the vibrations of the loud "A-men" as it issued from the
strong chests of the intoning clergy, sent a murmuring echo through the
distant arches, and the hushed assembly were awaiting the beneficent
words of the archbishop, a burgher, impatient to get home, or fearing
for his purse in the tumult of the crowd when the worshippers dispersed,
slipped quietly away, at the risk of being called a bad Catholic. On
which, a nobleman, leaning against one of the enormous columns that
surround the choir, hastened to take possession of the seat abandoned by
the worthy Tourainean. Having done so, he quickly hid his face among
the plumes of his tall gray cap, kneeling upon the chair with an air of
contrition that even an inquisitor would have trusted.

Observing the new-comer attentively, his immediate neighbors seemed to
recognize him; after which they returned to their prayers with a certain
gesture by which they all expressed the same thought,--a caustic,
jeering thought, a silent slander. Two old women shook their heads, and
gave each other a glance that seemed to dive into futurity.

The chair into which the young man had slipped was close to a chapel
placed between two columns and closed by an iron railing. It was
customary for the chapter to lease at a handsome price to seignorial
families, and even to rich burghers, the right to be present at the
services, themselves and their servants exclusively, in the various
lateral chapels of the long side-aisles of the cathedral. This simony
is in practice to the present day. A woman had her chapel as she now
has her opera-box. The families who hired these privileged places were
required to decorate the altar of the chapel thus conceded to them, and
each made it their pride to adorn their own sumptuously,--a vanity which
the Chu