Monsieur Fernand Gastebois, Mayor of St. Anonyme, was a Catholic and a Liberal. This feat may cause no flutter in the Nordic hearts of those for whom this story is intended, no quandaries in Nordic minds accustomed to distinguish between the claims of Peter and Caesar with untroubled equability. But in Lower Normandy in the years before the Great War, it took some doing to strike the balance between religion and politics of this particular shade; and the Mayor of St. Anonyme undoubtedly did it, with one unfortunate lapse which it is my business to relate.

A historian versed in the internecine bickers of France would doubtless be able to acquaint you with the springs of the situation. I, a mere looker-on, am not so fortunate and can only guess at the source of my hero’s difficulties. On the political side a Liberal is undoubtedly a fiercer beast in France than elsewhere. Horrid implications of Revolution hang about him. The rustle of innumerable Trees of Liberty is ever in his ears. In other lands such symptoms are tactfully given a Catholic turn and in the Liberty of the Sons of God your Nordic Liberal finds refreshment, light and peace. In France he is merely relegated to the left and kept there in the name of consistency, a false Latin god who did one of his worst pieces of work when he established as an anticlerical the kindly, pious and lovable Monsieur Gastebois.