and forced them to take a stringent oath of obedience to the new order
of things. All the bishops but four refused to take an oath which set
at naught the authority of the Pope: more than 50,000 priests likewise
refused, and were ejected from their livings: the recusants were
termed _orthodox_ or _non-juring_ priests, and by the law of August,
1792, they were exiled from France, while their more pliable or
time-serving brethren who accepted the new decree were known as
_constitutionals_. About 12,000 of the constitutionals married, while
some of them applauded the extreme Jacobinical measures of the Terror.
One of them shocked the faithful by celebrating the mysteries, having
a _bonnet rouge_ on his head, holding a pike in his hand, while his
wife was installed near the altar.[152] Outrages like these were rare:
but they served to discredit the constitutional Church and to throw up
in sharper relief the courage with which the orthodox clergy met exile
and death for conscience' sake. Moreover, the time-serving of the
constitutionals was to avail them little: during the Terror their
stipends were unpaid, and the churches were for the most part closed.
After a partial respite in 1795-6, the _coup d'etat_ of Fructidor
(1797) again ushered in two years of petty persecutions; but in the
early summer of 1799 constitutionals were once more allowed to observe
the Christian Sunday, and at the time of Bonaparte's return from
Egypt their services were more frequented than those of the
Theophilanthropists on the _decadis_. It was evident, then, that the
anti-religious _furor_ had burnt itself out, and that France was
turning back to her old faith. Indeed, outside Paris and a few other
large towns, public opinion mocked at the new cults, and in the
country districts the peasantry clung with deep affection to their old
orthodox priests, often following them into the forests to receive
their services and forsaking those of their supplanters.

Such, then, was the religious state of France in 1799: her clergy were
rent by a formidable schism; the orthodox priests clung where possible
to their parishioners, or lived in destitution abroad; the
constitutional priests, though still frowned on by the Directory, were
gaining ground at the expense of the Theophilanthropists, whose
expiring efforts excited ridicule. In fine, a nation weary of
religious experiments and groping about for some firm anchorage in the
midst of the turbid ebb-tide an