Let us follow the progress of philosophy in the upper class. Religion is the first to receive the severest attacks. The small group of skeptics, which is hardly perceptible under Louis XIV, has obtained its recruits in the dark; in 1698 the Palatine, the mother of the Regent, writes that "we scarcely meet a young man now who is not ambitious of being an atheist."4215 Under the Regency, unbelief comes out into open daylight. "I doubt," says this lady again, in 1722, "if; in all Paris, a hundred individuals can be found, either ecclesiastics or laymen, who have any true faith, or even believe in our Lord. It makes one tremble. . . ." The position of an ecclesiastic in society is already difficult. He is looked upon, apparently, as either a puppet or a dickey (a false shirt front)4216. "The moment we appear," says one of them, "we are forced into discussion; we are called upon to prove, for example, the utility of prayer to an unbeliever in God, and the necessity of fasting to a man who has all his life denied the immortality of the soul; the effort is very irksome, while those who laugh are not on our side." It is not long before the continued scandal of confession tickets and the stubbornness of the bishops in not allowing ecclesiastical property to be taxed, excites opinion against the clergy, and, as a matter of course, against religion itself. "There is danger," says Barbier in 1751, "that this may end seriously; we may some day see a revolution in this country in favor of Protestantism."4217 "The hatred against the priests," writes d'Argenson in 1753, "is carried to extremes. They scarcely show themselves in the streets without being hooted at. . . .As our nation and our century are quite otherwise enlightened (than in the time of Luther), it will be carried far enough; they will expel the priests, abolish the priesthood and get rid of all revelation and all mystery. . . . One dare not speak in behalf of the clergy in social circles; one is scoffed at and regarded as a familiar of the inquisition. The priests remark that, this year, there is a diminution of more than one-third in the number of communicants. The College of the Jesuits is being deserted; one hundred and twenty boarders have been withdrawn from these so greatly defamed monks. It has been observed also that, during the carnival in Paris, the number of masks counterfeiting ecclesiastical dress, bishops, abbÉs, monks and nuns, was never so great."—So deep is this antipathy, the most mediocre books become the rage so long as they are anti-Christian and condemned as such. In 1748 a work by Toussaint called "Les Moeurs," in favor of natural religion, suddenly becomes so famous, "that there is no one among a certain class of people," writes Barbier, "man or woman, pretending to be intellectual, who is not eager to read it." People accost each other on their promenades, Have you read "Les Moeurs"?—Ten years later they are beyond deism. "Materialism," Barbier further said, "is the great grievance. . . . " "Almost all people of erudition and taste, writes d'Argenson, "inveigh against our holy religion. . . . It is attacked on all sides, and what animates unbelievers still more is the efforts made by the devout to compel belief. They publish books which are but little read; debates no longer take place, everything being laughed at, while people persist in materialism." Horace Walpole, who returns to France in 1765,4218 and whose good sense anticipates the danger, is astonished at such imprudence: "I dined to day with a dozen scholars and scientists, and although all the servants were around us and listening, the conversation was much more unrestrained, even on the Old Testament, than I would allow at my own table in England even if a single footman was present." People dogmatize everywhere. "Joking is as much out of fashion as jumping jacks and tumblers. Our good folks have no time to laugh! There is God and the king to be hauled down first; and men and women, one and all, are devoutly employed in the demolition. They think me quite profane for having any belief left. . . . Do you know who the philosophers are, or what the term means here? In the first place it comprehends almost everybody; and in the next, means men, who, avowing war against popery, take aim, many of them, at a subversion of all religion. . . . These savants,—I beg their pardons, these philosophers—are insupportable, superficial, overbearing and fanatic: they preach incessantly, and their avowed doctrine is atheism; you would not believe how openly. Voltaire himself does not satisfy them. One of their lady devotees said of him, 'He is a bigot, a deist!'"

This is very strong, and yet we have not come to the end of it; for, thus far, impiety is less a conviction than the fashion. Walpole, a careful observer, is not deluded by it. "By what I have said of their religious or rather irreligious opinions, you must not conclude their people of quality atheists—at least not the men. Happily for them, poor souls! they are not capable of going so far into thinking. They assent to a great deal because it is the fashion, and because they don't know how to contradict." Now that "dandies are outmoded" and everybody is "a philosopher," "they are philosophers." It is essential to be like all the rest of the world. But that which they best appreciate in the new materialism is the pungency of paradox and the freedom given to pleasure. They are like the boys of good families, fond of playing tricks on their ecclesiastical preceptor. They take out of learned theories just what is wanted to make a dunce-cap, and derive the more amusement from the fun if it is seasoned with impiety. A seignior of the court having seen Doyen's picture of "St. Genevieve and the plague-stricken," sends to a painter the following day to come to him at his mistress's domicile: "I would like," he says to him, "to have Madame painted in a swing put in motion by a bishop; you may place me in such a way that I may see the ankles of that handsome woman, and even more, if you want to enliven your picture."4219 The licentious song "Marotte" "spreads like wildfire;" "a fortnight after its publication," says CollÉ, "I met no one without a copy; and it is the vaudeville, or rather, the clerical assembly, which gives it its popularity." The more irreligious a licentious book is the more it is prized; when it cannot be printed it is copied in manuscript. CollÉ counts "perhaps two thousand manuscript copies of' La Pucelle 'by Voltaire, scattered about Paris in one month." The magistrates themselves burn it only for form's sake. "It must not be supposed that the hangman is allowed to burn the books whose titles figure in the decree of the Court. Messieurs would be loath to deprive their libraries of the copy of those works which fall to them by right, and make the registrar supply its place with a few poor records of chicanery of which there is no scanty provision."4220

But, as the century advances, unbelief, less noisy, becomes more solid. It invigorates itself at the fountain-head; the women themselves begin to be infatuated with the sciences. In 1782,4221 one of Mme. de Genlis's characters writes,

Five years ago I left them thinking only of their attire and the preparation of their suppers; I now find them all scientific and witty." We find in the study of a fashionable woman, alongside of a small altar dedicated to Benevolence or Friendship, a dictionary of natural history and treatises on physics and chemistry. A woman no longer has herself painted as a goddess on a cloud but in a laboratory, seated amidst squares and telescopes4222. The Marquise de Nesle, the Comtesse de Brancas, the Comtesse de Pons, the Marquise de Polignac, are with Rouelle when he undertakes to melt and volatilize the diamond. Associations of twenty or twenty-five persons are formed in the drawing-rooms to attend lectures either on physics, applied chemistry, mineralogy or on botany. Fashionable women at the public meetings of the Academy of Inscriptions applaud dissertations on the bull Apis, and reports on the Egyptian, Phoenician and Greek languages. Finally, in 1786, they succeed in opening the doors of the College de France. Nothing deters them. Many of them use the lancet and even the scalpel; the Marquise de Voyer attends at dissections, and the young Comtesse de Coigny dissects with her own hands. The current infidelity finds fresh support on this foundation, which is that of the prevailing philosophy. Towards the end of the century4223 "we see young persons who have been in society six or seven years openly pluming themselves on their irreligion, thinking that impiety makes up for wit, and that to be an atheist is to be a philosopher." There are, undoubtedly, a good many deists, especially after Rousseau appeared, but I question whether, out of a hundred persons, there were in Paris at this time ten Christian men or women. "The fashionable world for ten years past," says Mercier4224 in 1783, "has not attended mass. People go only on Sundays so as not to scandalize their lackeys, while the lackeys well know that it is on their account." The Duc de Coigny,4225 on his estate near Amiens, refuses to be prayed for and threatens his curate if he takes that liberty to have him cast out of his pulpit; his son becomes ill and he prohibits the administering of the sacraments; the son dies and he opposes the usual obsequies, burying the body in his garden; becoming ill himself he closes his door against the bishop of Amiens, who comes to see him twelve times, and dies as he had lived. A scandal of this kind is doubtless notorious and, therefore, rare. Almost everybody, male and female, "ally with freedom of ideas a proper observance of forms."4226 When a maid appears and says to her mistress, "Madame la Duchesse, the Host (le bon Dieu) is outside, will you allow him to enter? He desires to have the honor of administering to you," appearances are kept up. The troublesome individual is admitted and he is politely received. If they slip away from him it is under a decent pretext; but if he is humored it is only out of a sense of decorum. "At Sura when a man dies, he holds a cow's tail in his hand." Society was never more detached from Christianity. In its eyes a positive religion is only a popular superstition, good enough for children and innocents but not for "sensible people" and the great. It is your duty to raise your hat to the Host as it passes, but your duty is only to raise your hat.

The last and gravest sign of all! If the curates who work and who are of the people hold the people's ideas, the prelates who talk, and who are of society hold the opinions of society. And I do not allude merely to the abbÉs of the drawing-room, the domestic courtiers, bearers of news, and writers of light verse, those who fawn in boudoirs, and who, when in company, answer like an echo, and who, between one drawing room and another, serve as megaphone; an echo, a megaphone only repeats the phrase, whether skeptical or not, with which it is charged. I refer to the dignitaries, and, on this point, the witnesses all concur. In the month of August, 1767, the AbbÉ Bassinet, grand vicar of Cahors, on pronouncing the panegyric of St. Louis in the Louvre chapel,4227 "suppressed the sign of the cross, making no quotation from Scripture and never uttering a word about Christ and the Saints. He considered Louis IX merely on the side of his political, moral and military virtues. He animadverted on the Crusades, setting forth their absurdity, cruelty and even injustice. He struck openly and without caution at the see of Rome." Others "avoid the name of Christ in the pulpit and merely allude to him as a Christian legislator."4228 In the code which the prevailing opinions and social decency impose on the clergy a delicate observer4229 thus specifies distinctions in rank with their proper shades of behavior: "A plain priest, a curate, must have a little faith, otherwise he would be found a hypocrite; at the same time, he must not be too well satisfied, for he would be found intolerant. On the contrary, the grand vicar may smile at an expression against religion, the bishop may laugh outright, and the cardinal may add something of his own to it." "A little while ago," a chronicle narrates, "some one put this question to one of the most respectable curates in Paris: Do you think that the bishops who insist so strenuously on religion have much of it themselves? The worthy pastor replied, after a moment's hesitation: There may be four or five among them who still believe." To one who is familiar with their birth, their social relations, their habits and their tastes, this does not appear at all improbable. "Dom Collignon, a representative of the abbey of Mettach, seignior high-justiciary and curate of Valmunster," a fine-looking man, fine talker, and an agreeable housekeeper, avoids scandal by having his two mistresses at his table only with a select few; he is in other respects as little devout as possible, and much less so than the Savoyard vicar, "finding evil only in injustice and in a lack of charity," and considering religion merely as a political institution and for moral ends. I might cite many others, like M. de Grimaldi, the young and gallant bishop of Le Mans, who selects young and gallant comrades of his own station for his grand vicars, and who has a rendezvous for pretty women at his country seat at Coulans4230. Judge of their faith by their habits. In other cases we have no difficulty in determining. Scepticism is notorious with the Cardinal de Rohan, with M. de Brienne, archbishop of Sens, with M. de Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, and with the AbbÉ Maury, defender of the clergy. Rivarol,4231 himself a skeptic, declares that at the approach of the Revolution, "the enlightenment of the clergy equaled that of the philosophers." "Who would believe it, but body with the fewest prejudices," says Mercier,4232 "is the clergy." And the Archbishop of Narbonne, explaining the resistance of the upper class of the clergy in 1791 4233 attributes it, not to faith but to a point of honor. "We conducted ourselves at that time like true gentlemen, for, with most of us, it could not be said that it was through religious feeling."