bits and
doctrines, the authoritative protectorate of the State over the Church,
the interference of the Emperor substituted for that of the King, and
Napoleon, in this as in other respects, the legitimate, or legitimated,
successor of the Bourbons. The others, who have sworn to the civil
constitution of the clergy, the schismatics, the impenitent and, in
spite of the Pope, reintegrated by the First Consul in the Church,[5178]
are ill-disposed towards the Pope, their principal adversary, and
well-disposed towards the First Consul, their unique patron. Hence,
"the heads[5179] of the Catholic clergy, that is to say, the bishops and
grand-vicars,... are attached to the government;" they are "enlightened"
people, and can be made to listen to reason.

"But we have three or four thousand cures or vicars, the progeny of
ignorance and dangerous through their fanaticism and their passions."

If these and their superiors show any undisciplined tendencies, the
curb must be tightly drawn. Fournier, a priest, having reflected on the
government from his pulpit in Saint-Roch, is arrested by the police,
put in Bicetre as mad,[5180] and the First Consul replies to the Paris
clergy who claim his release "in a well-drawn-up petition,":

"I wanted[5181] to prove to you, when I put my cap on the wrong side
out, that priests must obey the civil power."

Now and then, a rude stroke of this sort sets an example and keeps the
intractable on the right path who would otherwise be tempted to leave
it. At Bayonne, concerning a clerical epistle in which an ill-sounding
phrase occurs, "the grand-vicar who drew it up is sent to Pignerol for
ten years, and I think that the bishop is exiled."[5182]

At Seez, when constitutional priests are in disfavor, the bishop is
compelled to resign on the instant, while Abbe Langlois, his principal
counsellor, taken by the gendarmes, led to Paris from police station
to police station, is shut up in La Force, in secret confinement, with
straw for a bed, during fourteen days, then imprisoned in Vincennes for
nine months, so that, finally, seized with paralysis, he is transferred
to an insane retreat, where he remains a prisoner up to the end of the
reign.

Let us provide for the future as well as for the present, and, beyond
the present clergy, let us train the future clergy. The seminaries will
answer this purpose: "Public ones must be organized[5183] so that
there may be no clandestine seminaries, such as form