to hold aloof from politics.[1] With its legal status
thoroughly assured, thanks to the judicious measures taken by M.
Emery, St. Sulpice was blind to all that went on in the world outside.
After the Revolution of 1830, there was some little stir in the
college. The echo of the heated discussions of the day sometimes
pierced its walls, and the speeches of M. Mauguin--I am sure I don't
know why--were special favourites with the junior students. One of
them took an opportunity of reading to the superior, M. Duclaux, an
extract from a debate which had struck him as being more violent than
usual. The old priest, wrapped up in his own reflections, had scarcely
listened. When the student had finished, he awoke from his lethargy,
and shaking him by the hand, observed: "It is very clear, my lad, that
these men do not say their orisons." The remark has often recalled
itself to me of late in connection with certain speeches. What a light
is let in upon many points by the fact that M. Clemenceau does not
probably say his orisons!

These imperturbable old men were very indifferent to what went on
in the world, which to their mind was a barrel-organ continually
repeating the same tune. Upon one occasion there was a good deal of
commotion upon the Place St. Sulpice, and one of the professors, whose
feelings were not so well under control as those of his colleagues,
wanted them all "to go to the chapel and die in a body." "I don't
see the use of that," was the reply of one of his colleagues, and the
professors continued their constitutional walk under the colonnade of
the courtyard.

Amid the religious difficulties of the time, the priests of St.
Sulpice preserved an equally neutral and sagacious attitude, the only
occasions upon which they betrayed anything like warmth of feeling
being when the episcopal authority was threatened. They soon found out
the spitefulness of M. de Lamennais, and would have nothing to do with
him. The theological romanticism of Lacordaire and of Montalembert was
not much more appreciated by them, the dogmatic ignorance and the very
weak reasoning powers of this school indisposing them against it. They
were fully alive to the danger of Catholic journalism. Ultramontanism
they at first looked upon as merely a convenient method of appealing
to a distant and often ill-informed authority from one nearer at hand,
and less easy to inveigle. The older members, who had gone
through their studies at the Sorbonne b