In the 1880s, the people of Tour were torn over the advisability of rebuilding a large basilica to the glory of Saint Martin or building a modest church above his recently rediscovered tomb.

Mademoiselle Cloque, 70 years old at the start of the novel and still single, a fervent “basilician”,[N 1] divides her time between discussions with her servant Mariette and games of cards or checkers with the old Marquis d'Aubrebie, a neighbor and atheist friends with whom arguments are continuous.

She lives in the memory of her interview with the Viscount of Chateaubriand, whom she met when she was a young girl, but above all, she devotes a large part of her energy to the project of rebuilding a sumptuous basilica.

His friends, taking this pretext and feeling that their cause no longer had the favor of the aediles or even the archbishop, one after the other abandoned the Basilican party and the old lady, except for a handful of irreducible like Mr Houblon.

[4] The author strives above all to describe, in a tenderly ironic manner,[5] the chivalrous spirit and the rearguard battles of his heroine, ultimately "defeated by the forces of opportunism and hypocrisy”.

Her character, with slightly softened contours, nevertheless professes the same ideal of purity and righteousness that she tries to share with the narrator, a young adolescent, of whom she is the friend, the confidante but also the muse.

Boylesve depicts the compromises and small calculations of everyone: religious people like Mgr Fripière and most of the basilicians like the Jouffroy ladies prefer to abandon their ideal so as not to risk losing everything; the Grenaille-Montcontour family ultimately chose a rapprochement with the Jewish lawyers Niort-Caen, better able to ensure its future within the bourgeoisie than a union with the Catholic but penniless Geneviève; as for Madame Pigeonneau-Exelcis, it was without qualms that in the name of commercial interest, she chose to open her religious bookstore to secular works, like Nana, after her move to street Royale.

However, beneath a detached and sometimes slightly cynical exterior, it appears in the last lines of the work that he was perhaps the only true, sincere, and disinterested friend of Miss Cloque, no doubt admiring her constancy and stubbornness, without endorsing its opinions.

[9] On the one hand, the most fervent Catholics, "traditionalists", resolutely monarchists, grouped within the Work of the Cloakroom of Saint-Martin,[N 3] are campaigning for the reconstruction of a "great" basilica, comparable to the destroyed one.

Opposite, the diocesan architects, supported by the majority of the inhabitants of Tours, defend a less ambitious but above all less expensive project, of a more modest basilica, including only, in a crypt located under the choir, the remains of the tomb of Saint Martin.

The recently elected municipal council of Tours, republican, fiercely anticlerical and led by the radical Armand-Félix Rivière, initially opposed both projects equally.

[4] The historical basis of the novel being the construction of a new basilica dedicated to the cult of Saint Martin after the rediscovery of his tomb, the plot can only take place in Tours.The geography of the city is respected and most of the places mentioned in the work are real: the Saint-Clément church (being demolished at the beginning of the novel), the streets Descartes, of la Bourde, Nationale (street Royale at beginning of the novel) in Tours, the Marmoutier institution where young Geneviève is a resident, buildings such as the temporary chapel or the chapel of the convent of Perpetual Adoration ( Saint-Jean chapel ) or even the Hôtel du Faisan (destroyed during the Second World War ) in street Royale.

The central character, Athénaïs Cloque, is very likely modeled after a neighbor and friend of Boylesve's grandparents - she lives on the Strees des Halles -, a fervent believer called Adélaïde Blacque[2] from Nogent-sur-Seine;[4] the phonetic similarity between first and last names is striking.

[4] However, unlike the character she inspired, Miss Blacque took no active part in the war of the basilicas, even if she undoubtedly approved the project to build the great church.

[4] Concerning the Marquis d'Aubrebie, "gentle and reasonable philosopher" according to François Trémouilloux,[2] Émile Gérard-Gailly writes: "It is, or I am very wrong, René Boylesve himself, with a white wig prematurely placed on his head».

Boylesve would thus transform himself into an actor in his own stories through his characters, the Marquis d'Aubrebie in Mademoiselle Cloque and, in another register, Baron de Chemillé in Laçon d'amour dans un parc to which the novelist lends his own feelings.

He is a one-eyed and unsociable plumber - zinc worker named Compaing (or Campaign), as republican and anticlerical in life as in the book, municipal councilor of Tours in 1884.

[18] René Marill Albérès is more nuanced: in his work Histoire du roman moderne (1962), he regrets that the success of Mademoiselle Cloque is due “to a manner of academic application, to a set of proven recipes”, but this opinion remains in the minority, especially among the more recent specialists of Boylesve.

[5] On the other hand, according to André Bourgeois, although in no way irreligious, Boylesve published a book "extremely dangerous for religion" due to the reasoning sometimes marked by "Jesuitism" of Miss Cloque.

On the other hand, from Geneviève's vacation, it is the actions and feelings of the latter which seem to drive the plot and attract the attention and sympathy of the reader, Miss Cloque acting or reacting depending on her niece at the same time.