The prominence given by the Press to the suicide of the Boulevard de Villiers rendered the negotiations between the Stage and the Church all the more difficult.

The reporters had given the fullest details of the event, and it was pointed out by the Abbe Mirabelle, the Archbishop's second vicar, that to open the doors of the parish church to Chevalier, as matters then stood, was to proclaim that excommunicated persons were entitled to the prayers of the Church.
But for that matter, Monsieur Mirabelle himself, who in this affair displayed great wisdom and circumspection, paved the way to a solution.
"You must fully understand," he observed to Madame Doulce, "that the opinion of the newspapers cannot affect our decision.

We are absolutely indifferent to it, and we do not disturb ourselves in the slightest degree, no matter what fifty public sheets may say about the unfortunate young fellow.

Whether the journalists have told the truth or distorted it is their affair, not mine.

I do not know and I do not wish to know what they have written.