“When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the square, he thought the priest’s behavior 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 defense of her cure.

“’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 with 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 fulfill 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 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 proves to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in torpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them.’

“He ceased looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling over the chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of the town council.  But the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening to a distant rolling.”

What is this?  A dialogue, a scene such as occurred each time that Homais had occasion to speak of priests.

There is something better in the last passage of page 271: 

“Public attention was distracted by the appearance of Monsieur Bournisien, who was going across the market with the holy oil.

“Homais, as we due to his principles, compared priests to ravens attracted by the odour of death.  The sight of an ecclesiastic was personally disagreeable to him, for the cassock made him think of the shroud, and he detested the one from some fear of the other.”

Our old friend, he who lent us the catechism, was very happy over this phrase; he said to us:  “It is a true hit; it is indeed the portrait of a priestophobe whom the cassock makes think of a shroud, and who holds one in execration from a little fear of the other.”  He was impious, and he profaned the cassock a little through impiety, perhaps, but much more because he was made to think of a shroud.