These marvels attracted a crowd of inquirers to the flat inhabited by the Deniseau family in the Place Saint-Exupère, above the tramway office. The young girl was studied by ecclesiastics, retired officers, and doctors of medicine. They believed that they noticed, when she was repeating the words of Saint Radegonde, that her voice became deeper, her expression sterner, and that her limbs became rigid. They also noticed that she used expressions which are not customary with young girls, and that her words could be explained by no natural means.
M. _le préfet_ Worms-Clavelin, at first indifferent and scoffing, soon followed the extraordinary success of the prophetess with anxiety, for she announced the end of the Republic and the return of France to a Christian monarchy.
M. Worms-Clavelin had entered office at the time of the scandals at the Élysée under President Grévy. Since then he had participated in those cases of corruption that are endlessly being hushed up and as constantly revived to the great detriment of Parliament and the public authority. And this spectacle, which seemed natural to him, had ingrafted in his mind a profound feeling of laxity, which spread from him to all his subordinates. A senator and two deputies from his department were being threatened with legal proceedings. The most influential members of the party, engineers and financiers, were either in prison or in hiding. Under these circumstances, satisfied that the people were attached to the republican rule, he expected from them neither enthusiasm nor deference, which seemed to him but old-fashioned qualities and the empty symbols of a vanished age. Events had enlarged his naturally limited intelligence. The vast irony of things had passed into his soul, making it easy-going, mocking, indifferent. Having recognised, moreover, that the electoral committees constituted the only real authority that still subsisted in the department, he obeyed them with a semblance of zeal and with secret opposition. If he executed their orders, it was not without a considerable modification of their rigour. In a word, from opportunist he had become liberal and progressive. He willingly allowed liberty of speech and action. But he was too wise to allow any unbearable excesses, and, like a conscientious official, he took good care that the government should not receive any glaring insult, and that the ministers should peaceably enjoy that common attitude of indifference which, by gaining over their friends as well as their enemies, ensured at the same time both their power and their repose.