influence; besides
his secular and regular clergy, over and beyond the two thousand five
hundred exemplary or directorial lives which he controls, we see
behind him an indefinite multitude of lay adhesions and devotedness.
Consequently, every government must take him into their calculations,
and all the more because his colleagues stand by him; the episcopacy,
banded together, remains erect in face of the omnipotent State, under
the July monarchy as claimants of free instruction and under the second
empire in support of the temporal power of the Pope.--In this militant
attitude, the figure of the bishop is fully unveiled; the titular
champion of an infallible Church, himself a believer and submissive; his
voice is extraordinarily proud and defiant;[5259] in his own eyes, he
is the unique depository of truth and morality; in the eyes of his
followers, he becomes a superhuman personage, a prophet of salvation or
of destruction, the annunciator of divine judgments, the dispenser of
celestial anger or of celestial pardon; he rises to the clouds in an
apotheosis of glory; with women especially, this veneration grows into
enthusiasm and degenerates into idolatry. Towards the end of the second
empire an eminent French bishop, on a steamboat on Lake Leman, taking
a roll of bread from his pocket, seated himself alongside of two ladies
and ate it, handing each of them a piece of it. One of them, bowing
reverently, replied to him, "At your hands, my lord, this is almost the
holy communion!"[5260]

IV. The subordinate clergy.

The subordinates.--The secular clergy.--Its derivation and
how recruited.--How prepared and led.--The lower seminary.--
The higher seminary.--Monthly lectures and annual retreat.--
The Exercitia.--The Manreze du Pretre.--The cure in his
parish.--His role a difficult one.--His patience and correct
conduct.

A clergy submissive in mind and feeling, long prepared by its condition
and education for faith and obedience, acts under the sway of this
sovereign and consecrated hand.[5261] Among the 40,000 cures and
desservans "more than 35,000 belong to the laboring class of workmen and
peasants,"[5262] not the first class of peasants, but the second class,
the poorer families earning their daily bread and often with a good many
children. Under the pressure of the ambient atmosphere and of the modern
regime, the others keep back their sons, retaining them for the world
and denyi