follows the road marked out when a child.

"Listen,[5114] last Sunday, here at Malmaison, while strolling alone in
the solitude enjoying the repose of nature, my ear suddenly caught the
sound of the church-bell at Rueil. I was moved, so strong is the force
of early habits and education! I said to myself, What an impression this
must make on simple, credulous people!"

Let us gratify them; let us give back these bells and the rest to the
Catholics. After all, the general effect of Christianity is beneficial.

"As far as I am concerned,[5115] I do not see in it the mystery of
the incarnation, but the mystery of social order, the association of
religion with paradise, an idea of equality which keeps the rich from
being massacred by the poor."

"Society[5116] could not exist without an inequality of fortunes, and an
inequality of fortunes without religion.[5117] A man dying of starvation
alongside of one who has abundance would not yield to this difference
unless he had some authority which assured him that God so orders it
that there must be both poor and rich in the world, but that in
the future, and throughout eternity, the portion of each will be
changed.[5118]"

Alongside of the repressive police exercised by the State there is a
preventive police exercised by the Church. The clergy, in its cassock,
is an additional spiritual gendarmerie, much more efficient than the
temporal gendarmerie in its stout boots, while the essential thing is to
make both keep step together in concert.

Between the two domains, between that which belongs to civil authority
and that which belongs to religious authority, is there any line of
separation?

"I look in vain[5119] where to place it; its existence is purely
chimerical. I see only clouds, obscurities, difficulties. The civil
government condemns a criminal to death; the priest gives him absolution
and offers him paradise."

In relation to this act, both powers operate publicly in an inverse
sense on the same individual, one with the guillotine and the other with
a pardon. As these authorities may clash with each other, let us
prevent conflicts and leave no undefined frontier; let us trace this out
beforehand; let us indicate what our part is and not allow the Church to
encroach on the State.--The Church rally wants all; it is the accessory
which she concedes to us, while she appropriates the principal to
herself.

"Mark the insolence of the priests[5120] who, in sharing auth