France and the Republic | Page 6

Dordogne invalidated to snub Léon Say--Socrates and David Hume in modern France--Dogmatic irreligion--Jules Simon on the proscription of Christianity--Abolishing the history of France--A practical protest of the Catholic Marne--The great pope of the crusades--Catholic and Masonic processions--The Triduum of Urban II.--A great celebration at Chatillon--Hildebrand and his disciple--The Angelus and the 'Truce of God'--Mgr. Freppel on the anti-religious war--Jeanne d'Arc at Reims--A magnificent festival--Gounod's Mass of the Maid of Orléans--Catholic protest against the persecution of the Jews--The Republic threatens the grand rabbis with the archbishops--Deriding a death-bed in a hospital--The amnesty of the Communards--The rehabilitation of crime--Tyranny in the village schools--Religious freedom in France and Turkey--The home of Jeanne d'Arc--'Laicising' Domrémy-la-Pucelle--Piety and hypnotism--The chamber and garden of Jeanne--Louis XI. and the French yeomen--A shrine converted into a show--A scurvy job in a place of pilgrimage--The banner of Patay--Jeanne and her voices--A western worshipper of the Maid of Orléans--The Chateau de Bourlémont--The Princesse d'Hénin and Madame de Sta?l--The revolutionary traffic in passports--A generous act of Madame Du Barry--'Laicisation' in the Vosges--The defeat of Jules Ferry--The Monarchists going up, the Republicans going down 369-436
CHAPTER XIV
IN THE CALVADOS
Val Richer--The home of Guizot--The French Protestants and the Third Republic--Free education in France the work of Guizot--Education in France checked by the Revolution--Medi?val provisions for public education--The effect of the English and the religious wars upon education in France--Indiscriminate destruction of educational foundations by the First Republic--Progress of illiteracy after 1793--The guillotine as a financial expedient--The Directory painted by themselves--The two Merlins--'Republican Titans' wearing royal livery--Barras on the cruelty of poltroons--Education under Napoleon--The Concordat and the Church--Napoleon's University of France--A machine for creating moral unity--The despotism of 1802 and 1882--The Liberals of 1830--Primary education under M. Guizot--The rights of the family and the encroachments of the State--Catholic vindication of Protestant liberty under Louis XIV.--The heirs of M. Guizot in Normandy and Languedoc--M. de Witt at Val Richer--Three historic chateaux--The birthplace of Montesquieu at La Brède--The Abbey of Thomas à-Becket--The Chateau de Broglie--Lisieux--M. Guizot as a landscape gardener--A Protestant statesman among the Catholics of the Calvados--The Sieur de Longiumeau and the sacred right of insurrection--'Moral unity' and 'moral harmony'--Catholicism in the Calvados, Brittany, and Poitou--Charlotte Corday--The historic family of De Witt--An election in the Calvados--The people and the functionaries--Bonnebosq--The Normans and personal liberty--The procedure of a French election--Mayors with votes in their sleeves--Glass urns and wooden boxes--Gerrymandering in France and America--Catholic constituents congratulating their Protestant candidate--'Vive le roi!'--M. Bocher on two Republican presidents--Wilsonism and the Norman farmers--The domestic distilleries--The war against religion in Normandy--'The Church as the key of trade'--How the officials revise the elections--Prefects interfering in the elections--A solid Monarchist department--Politics and the apple crop--The weak point of the Monarchists--The traditions of Versailles and 'modern high life'--Louis XV. and Barras--Madame Du Barry and Madame Tallien--The 'noble' grooms of ignoble cocottes--The Legitimists under the Empire--The war of 1870-71, and the fusion of classes--Historic names in the French army--Officers and the chateaux--An American minister and the Comte de Paris--The Monarchist and the Republican representatives--The Duc de Broglie in the Eure--Architectural evidence as to the social life of the ancien régime--The war of classes a consequence, not a cause, of the Revolution--The Vicomte de Noailles and Artemus Ward--Feudal serfs and New York anti-renters--Jefferson and lettres de cachet--The Bastille and the Tower of London--Don Quixote and the wine skins--The Chateau d'Eu--Private rights in the 14th century--The 'Nonpareil' of the world--La Grande Mademoiselle and her lieges at Eu--Her hospitals and charities--A quick-witted mayor--A model Republican prefect--The Duc de Penthièvre--The Orléans family at Eu--Local popularity of the Comte and Comtesse de Paris--Norman grievances, old and new--A Protestant movement in Normandy--American associations with Broglie, La Brède, and Val Richer--Mr. Bancroft on the ministers of Louis Philippe--The 'military council' of Royalist officers in the Revolution--Louis Philippe and Thiers--The rights of property under the Second Empire--The seizure of the Orléans property--The Jacobin levelling of incomes--The reformer Réal as an opulent count--The Orléans property restored in 1872, as a matter of 'common honesty'--What the princes recovered, and what they presented to France--The 'wounded conscience' of a nation--The daughter of Madame de Sta?l--The present Duc de Broglie and the anti-religions war--The Conservative republic made impossible--The Radical Jacobins rule the roast--'The Republic commits suicide to save itself from slaughter'--Floquet the master of Carnot--The war against God--Two statesmen of the South--N?mes and M. Guizot--The religious wars in Languedoc--The son of M. Guizot at Uzès--Politics in the Gard--Catholics and Protestants fighting side by side--The late M. Cornelis de Witt--The hereditary principle in Holland--What the United States learned from the Netherlands and from England--How the Duke of York missed an American throne--A Protestant monarchist in the Lot-et-Garonne--The plums of Agen and the apricots of Nicole--Coeur de Lion and Bertrand de Boru--The home of Nostradamus--Why the Germans beat the French--The barber bard of Languedoc--Scaliger and the Huguenots--Nérac and the Reine Margot--The