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tion, the frontiers of kingdoms oscillated on the map, the sound of a super-human sword was heard as it was drawn from the sheath; they beheld him arise erect on the horizon with a blazing brand in his hand and a glow in his eyes, unfolding amid the thunder his two wings, the grand army of the Republic, the French Revolution.

The choice of rulers had been Progress either by gentle slopes or by the raging of storms and torrents; they refused the one and were not able to prevent the other. Consequently the horrors of '89 and '93.

After the Battle of Waterloo the wind ceased, the smoke cleared away, the drums held their peace, the weapons were laid aside. It was now the turn of Intelligence.

The Revolution was the most important step of the human race since the advent of Christ. It hurled to the earth the monarchy of four thousand years; it threw away the feudalism of about fifteen centuries.

But to demolish mummified ideas, to cause hatreds and wraths and prejudices to disappear and (as there is no vacuum in the human heart) to reconstruct the mind, to reorganize and furnish it, by that vast dawn of principles and virtues. This was and ever is the true revolution.

This is certainly true: hence the greatest need of civilization is, an army of school masters with their heads wholly in the light, unfaltering, if their feet are set in affliction and difficulty, pressing on the upward way by the force of those two powerful motors, Faith and Love.

This thought has been developed by others, we pass on.

CHAPTER IX.

AN ILLUSTRIOUS FRENCHMAN

In 1817 Monsieur Henri Cammille, who lived in Paris, was at that age when men who think have great depth and ingenuousness. He was the son of a councilman of the Parliament of Paris, hence he belonged to the nobility of the bar. Monsieur Cammille had been reared in the idea of the divine right of kings and the domination of religion in the affairs of the State. He detested the Republic.

At the time of a profound and powerful movement made essential by the study of the Middle Ages, Monsieur Cammille read the histories, the memoirs, the bulletins, the proclamations; he devoured everything. The revolution, the republic had been monstrous words to him, which meant only anarchy and ruin; he now wished to discover the root of the whole matter. The history upon which his eye fell appalled him. The first effect was to dazzle him, where he expected to find only chaos in the idea of the Republic, he saw the grand figure of the people emerge from the revolution in the sovereignty of civil right restored to the masses, and absolute individuality in all questions of religion.

Monsieur Cammille began to understand his country, at the same time his ideas underwent an extraordinary change. However, this change was not accomplished all at once, the phases of the change were numerous and successive. This

is the history of many minds in that day. And as it is the history of many minds in our day, we think it will prove useful to follow these phases step by step, and to indicate them all.

This is a history of ideas and manners, it has to do with hearts and souls; we indicate external events only as they touch human happiness and well being. All that is written in this book of the Church of Rome are facts that are well authenticated; we set them down because we believe it is important to know them; that all should know them in order to avoid a return of the past.

We point these facts out without hate, for we know that many of the best and blest of earth have been of that communion. It is the state of mind on the march from fiction to reality, from evil to good, from sin to perfection, from destruction to Paradise, that we are recording. Progress is not occomplished in one stage. That stated once for all in connection with what precedes, as well as with what is to follow, we continue.

Monsieur Cammille gained a tremendous grasp of facts and events; he looked fixedly at the facts; he scrutinized the principles.

The revolution effected in his mind cost a mighty effort, at times, it seemed to him to mean only anarchy, chaos, the abyss, and he knew not where he stood, then again he saw radiations of gleaming stars, and flickerings of infinite realities. He beheld the people of France rise from the tyranny of a race petrified in dogmatism and demoralized by lucre, in the sovereignty of civil right, their heads inundated in the light of religious liberty. He asserted in his conscience

that this is good. A splendid enthusiasm for the absolute took possession of his whole being. He saw that right is not, like the Colossus of Rhodes, on two shores at once, with one foot on the Republic, and one in Royalty, it is indivisible and all on one side.

Monsieur Cammille traveled extensively throughout his own country in order to ferret out the true condition of the people and the country. The roads were bad, the equipages were miserable and the horses were wretched.

"Far and wide lay a ruined country; yielding but desolation. Every green leaf and blade of grass was as shriveled and poor as the miserable people; everything was bowed down, dejected, oppressed and broken. Habitations, fences, domesticated animals, men, women, children and the soil that bore them all worn out.

At the steepest point of a hill there was a little burial ground with a cross and the figure of our Saviour on it, to this emblem a woman was kneeling. A carriage passed, she turned her head; she rose quickly and presented herself at the carriage door.

"It is you Monsieur? Monsieur a petition." A cruel face looked out.

"Monsieur, my husband died of want; so many die of want; so many more will die of want."

"Well, can I feed them?"

"Monsieur, the good God knows; my baby is starving and will soon be laid under a heap of poor grass, and when I am dead of the same malady, I shall be laid under another heap of poor grass. Monsieur, there are so many, they increase so fast, there is so much want."

The lackey put her away, the horses broke into a brisk trot, the postillions quickened their pace, she was left far behind. Monsieur rapidly diminished the distance that remained between him and his chateau.

There were thirteen hundred and twenty thousand peasants' dwellings in France with but three openings; eighteen hundred hovels with but two openings, the door and a window, and three hundred and forty thousand cabins besides, with but one opening, the door. This, because of the tax on doors and windows. Poor families, old women, and women that were young but looked old, and little children living in these dwellings; and behold the fevers and maladies that resulted.

And then how had the church used her power in matters of the conscience? Under the guidance of her Christian pastors the populace was entertained by cutting off the hand and pulling out the tongue of young men because they would not bow down in the rain to a company of dirty priests. And this as late as the year seventeen hundred and seventy-five of our Lord.

Think of that poor Hugenot woman, who, in 1685, under Louis the Great, while with a nursing infant, was bound naked to the waist, to a stake, and the child kept at a distance; her breast swelled with milk and her heart with anguish. The little one hungry and pale, beheld that breast and cried and agonized; the executioner said to the woman, a mother and a nurse, 'adjure,' giving her the choice between the death of her infant and the death of her conscience.

"Aigues Mortes is a town on a shallow bay or marsh about three miles from the Mediterranean. It was built

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