of
superstition; and he, who as a youth had refused to go through life
wearing the mask of the infidel abbe, had too much self-respect in his
manhood to practise the rites and uses of a system which he considered
a degradation of the understanding. One day the king said to Maurepas:
'You have given me a Controller-general who never goes to mass.' 'Sire,'
replied that ready worldling, 'the Abbe Terray always went'--and Terray
had brought the government to bankruptcy. But Turgot hurt the king's
conscience more directly than by staying away from mass and confession.
Faithful to the long tradition of his ancestors, Lewis XVI. wished the
ceremony of his coronation to take place at Rheims. Turgot urged that it
should be performed at Paris, and as cheaply as possible. And he
advanced on to still more delicate ground. In the rite of consecration,
the usage was that the king should take an oath to pursue all heretics.
Turgot demanded the suppression of this declaration of intolerance. It
was pointed out to him that it was only a formality. But Turgot was one
of those severe and scrupulous souls, to whom a wicked promise does not
cease to be degrading by becoming hypocritical. And he was perfectly
justified. It was only by the gradual extinction of the vestiges of her
ancient barbarisms, as occasion offered, that the Church could have
escaped the crash of the Revolution. Meanwhile, the king and the priests
had their own way: the king was crowned at Rheims, and the priests
exacted from him an oath to be unjust, oppressive, and cruel towards a
portion of his subjects. Turgot could only remonstrate; but the
philosophic memorial in which he protested in favour of religious
freedom and equality, gave the king a serious shock.

We have no space, nor would it be worth while, to describe the intrigues
which ended in the minister's fall. Already in the previous volume, we
have referred to the immediate and decisive share which, the queen had
in his disgrace.[47] He was dismissed in the beginning of May 1776,
having been in power little more than twenty months. 'You are too
hurried,' Malesherbes had said to him. 'You think you have the love of
the public good; not at all; you have a rage for it, for a man must be
nothing short of enraged to insist on forcing the hand of the whole
world.' Turgot replied, more pathetically perhaps than reasonably,
'What, you accuse me of haste, and you know that in my family we die of
gout at fifty!'

[Fo