have neither home, family,
country, nor heart, if it be possible: to serve a dead system, none but
dead men are wanted--wandering and troubled spirits, without a
sepulchre and without repose.

By means of the words _unity_ and _universal Church_, they have made
them quit the ways of the Church of France. They now enjoy the fruits
of this change! They well know what Rome is, and what a Jesuitical
bishop is. If the universality of mind (which is the only true one)
was ever possessed by Rome, she lost it a long time ago; it is to be
met with again, in modern times, and it is in France. For two
centuries past, we may say, morally speaking, that France is the pope.
The authority is here, under one form or another; it is here by Louis
XIV., by Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau, by the _Constituante_,
the Code and Napoleon. Europe has always its centre, every other
nation is on the outside.

The world goes on, and flies away, far, very far from the middle ages.
Most people think of them no more; but I shall not forget them. The
shameful parade made of them by any one before my eyes, will not induce
me to turn my heart from those dark and mournful ages, with which I
have been so long acquainted, suffering when they have suffered. The
sympathy I retain for that by-gone age, whose ashes I have warmed
again, prevents me from being indifferent to its most faithless
representatives. I do not hate, but I make comparisons, and am sad. I
cannot pass the front of the church-porch without saying to Notre Dame,
in the words of the ancient, "O miseram domum, quam dispari dominaris
domino!" Alas! poor house, thou hast made a sad change of masters!

I have never been insensible either to the humiliation of the Church,
or to the sufferings of the priest. I have them all present, both
before my imagination and in my heart. I have followed this
unfortunate man in the career of privations, and in the miserable life
into which he is dragged by the hand of a hypocritical authority. And
in his loneliness, on his cold and melancholy hearth, where he
sometimes weeps at night, let him remember that a man has often wept
with him, and that I am that man.

Who would not pity this victim of social contradictions? The laws tell
him things diametrically opposite to one another, as if to sport with
him. They will and they will not have him obey nature. The canon law
says No, and the civil law says Yes. If he take the latter to be
seri