t
astonishing abbe Boudes going on before the Assizes of Aveyron! After
trying to poison his curate through the sacramental wine, and committing
such other crimes as abortion, rape, flagrant misconduct, forgery,
qualified theft and usury, he ended by appropriating the money put in
the coin boxes for the souls in purgatory, and pawning the ciborium,
chalice, all the holy vessels. That case is worth following."

Carhaix raised his eyes to heaven.

"If he is not sent to jail, there will be one more priest for Paris,"
said Des Hermies.

"How's that?"

"Why, all the ecclesiastics who get in bad in the provinces, or who have
a serious falling out with the bishop, are sent here where they will be
less in view, lost in the crowd, as it were. They form a part of that
corporation known as 'scratch priests.'"

"What are they?"

"Priests loosely attached to a parish. You know that in addition to a
curate, ministrants, vicars, and regular clergy, there are in every
church adjunct priests, supply priests. Those are the ones I am talking
about. They do the heavy work, celebrate the morning masses when
everybody is asleep and the late masses when everybody is doing. It is
they who get up at night to take the sacrament to the poor, and who sit
up with the corpses of the devout rich and catch cold standing under the
dripping church porches at funerals, and get sunstroke or pneumonia in
the cemetery. They do all the dirty work. For a five or ten franc fee
they act as substitutes for colleagues who have good livings and are
tired of service. They are men under a cloud for the most part. Churches
take them on, ready to fire them at a moment's notice, and keep strict
watch over them while waiting for them to be interdicted or to have
their _celebret_ taken away. I simply mean that the provincial parishes
excavate on the city the priests who for one reason or another have
ceased to please."

"But what do the curates and other titulary abbes _do_, if they unload
their duties onto the backs of others?"

"They do the elegant, easy work, which requires no effort, no charity.
They shrive society women who come to confession in their most stunning
gowns; they teach proper little prigs the catechism, and preach, and
play the limelight roles in the gala ceremonials which are got up to
pander to the tastes of the faithful. At Paris, not counting the scratch
priests, the clergy is divided thus: Man-of-the-world priests in easy
circumstances: