he blessed the whole world,
which was none the better for it, and excommunicated his enemies, who
were none the worse for it. At last, feeling himself nigh to death,
and fearing lest the schism die with him, he elected his two vicars
cardinals on the condition that after his death one of the two would
elect the other pope. The election was made. The new pope, supported by
the cardinal who made him, continued the schism for awhile. Finally both
entered into negotiations with Rome, made honorable amends, and returned
to the fold of Holy Church, one with the title of Arch bishop of
Seville, the other as Archbishop of Toledo.

From this time until 1790 Avignon, widowed of her popes, was governed
by legates and vice-legates. Seven sovereign pontiffs had resided
within her walls some seven decades; she had seven hospitals, seven
fraternities of penitents, seven monasteries, seven convents, seven
parishes, and seven cemeteries.

To those who know Avignon there was at that epoch--there is yet--two
cities within a city: the city of the priests, that is to say, the Roman
city, and the city of the merchants, that is to say, the French city.
The city of the priests, with its papal palace, its hundred churches,
its innumerable bell-towers, ever ready to sound the tocsin of
conflagration, the knell of slaughter. The town of the merchants, with
its Rhone, its silk-workers, its crossroads, extending north, east,
south and west, from Lyons to Marseilles, from Nimes to Turin. The
French city, the accursed city, longing for a king, jealous of its
liberties, shuddering beneath its yoke of vassalage, a vassalage of the
priests with the clergy for its lord.

The clergy--not the pious clergy, tolerantly austere in the practice
of its duty and charity, living in the world to console and edify
it, without mingling in its joys and passions--but a clergy such as
intrigue, cupidity, and ambition had made it; that is to say, the
court abbes, rivalling the Roman priests, indolent, libertine, elegant,
impudent, kings of fashion, autocrats of the salon, kissing the hands of
those ladies of whom they boasted themselves the paramours, giving their
hands to kiss to the women of the people whom they honored by making
their mistresses.

Do you want a type of those abbes? Take the Abbe Maury. Proud as a duke,
insolent as a lackey, the son of a shoemaker, more aristocratic than the
son of a great lord.

One understands that these two categories of inh