It had already been taken out of the pot and couched on a platter amid vegetables when they arrived.  Carhaix, sprawling in an armchair, was reading his breviary.

“What’s going on in the world?” he asked, closing his book.

“Nothing.  Politics doesn’t interest us, and General Boulanger’s American tricks of publicity weary you as much as they do us, I suppose.  The other newspaper stories are just a little more shocking or dull than usual.—­Look out, you’ll burn your mouth,” as Durtal was preparing to take a spoonful of soup.

“In fact,” said Durtal, grimacing, “this marrowy soup, so artistically golden, is like liquid fire.  But speaking of the news, what do you mean by saying there is nothing of pressing importance?  And the trial of that 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?”