CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIVEN FOUNDATION BOOK FUND 
 
 In Memory of 
 
 JOHN LA PORTE GIVEN 
 
 CLASS OF 1896 
 
r 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 
 DC 255.L4A81 1965 
 
 Abbe de Lamennais and the liberal Cathol 
 
 lllllllllllll! II: II 
 3 1924 028 167 330 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028167330 
 
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 THE ABBE-DE LAMENNAIS AND 
 
 THE LIBERAL CATHOLIC 
 
 MOVEMENT IN FRANCE 
 
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 William Gibson Ashbourne 
 
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 Ann Arbor London 
 
This "OP Book" Is an Authorized Reprint of the 
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I THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 which none but a master-hand might dare to con- 
 struct the Future. It was fortunate that the very 
 forces of destruction, working on minds and brains, 
 had provided for this, and had evolved, not one, but 
 a series of thinkers, each of whom contributed some- 
 thing to the work. In France alone there are many 
 names not unworthy of notice ; but of these I must 
 be content to mention, as forming in themselves a 
 kind of continuity in thought, De Maistre, Bonald, 
 Chateaubriand, Lamennais, and Comte. 
 
 Following the local and personal exaggerations, 
 as well as the apparent failure of the Revolution, it 
 was natural that the earlier of this series of writers 
 should have given to their work, superficially at least, 
 the character of a reactionary movement. But we 
 should bear in mind that in reality a return to the 
 dead past was impossible ; and that they, and especi- 
 ally De Maistre with his profound insight into human 
 nature, were not unaware of this. Had it been other- 
 wise they could have had no message for their time, 
 and consequently would have been starved by neglect 
 out of the world of life and movement. 
 
 Pondering on this fact, wandering in thought 
 over the ground made holy by the footsteps of these 
 great men, studying them not only in their work but 
 in their character, I was especially impressed by the 
 fact that in one of them at least a severe and ruth- 
 less logic, a by no means scanty fund of cynicism, 
 and a somewhat pronounced development of the 
 critical faculty were strangely mingled with a wild 
 and stormy temperament, a temperament in which 
 
AN INCIDENT AT ST. MALO 6 
 
 a daring, persistent energy was often • rudely broken 
 down by uncouth, almost incomprehensible attacks 
 of exaggerated melancholy, explaining at once the 
 value and the deep pathos of his life. This deter- 
 mined me in my choice of him as the central figure 
 in the present study. 
 
 Thinking of this, and remembering what I had 
 read of the dreamings and stragglings of his young 
 days, and of the place which witnessed them, I felt 
 that I should find something to inspire me in the 
 wild, rugged scenery, the gloomy colouring, the angry 
 battlings of wind and water round the little tide- 
 washed town in Brittany which gave birth to him. 
 
 And I thought of St. Malo, built on a rock in the 
 midst of the water, protected from the violence of 
 the sea by a solid rampart of granite rising sheer 
 from its foundation of primaeval stone — thought of 
 its history, of its legends, of its tutelary Virgin 
 thrown up fully formed by the angry deep and set 
 over the great gate, fit guardian of the storm-lashed 
 town. I remembered the Eocher du Naye with its 
 barbarous drownings of criminals tied up in weighted 
 sacks and thrown over to perish in the waves below, 
 whose last gurgling cries are said to still mingle with 
 the low, sad moanings of the wind at night-time, as 
 it makes its way in at the gates under the ramparts, 
 and hugging the houses, winds along the narrow 
 streets, and creeps under the doors, causing the 
 shuddering inmates to draw closer round the fire. I 
 thought of the fishermen going year by year to the 
 fisheries in Iceland and Newfoundland, leaving in 
 
4 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 March and returning to shelter in October and 
 November ; of Jacques Cartier, the discoverer of 
 Canada ; of the corsairs, of Duquay Trouin ... of 
 Chateaubriand. 
 
 So strong, indeed, was the impression made upon 
 me by this thought, that I determined to go to the 
 place ; there, in the midst of granite rocks and winter 
 storms, to pen the first pages of this work. 
 
 I have a room overlooking the sea, which is wild 
 and stormy. The windows are rattling with the wind, 
 which is howling round the house. When first I 
 came to it it was already dark, and as I opened the 
 door the candle flickered and nearly went out. There 
 was a low, weird moaning in the chimney from the 
 storm without. Every now and then a blast would 
 seem to shake the whole house, and there was a clat- 
 tering on the window panes which reminded me 
 unpleasantly of rain, but which I afterwards discovered 
 to have been caused by fine particles of sand, blown 
 up from the shore. Pulling aside the curtain, and 
 peering out into the darkness, I could see a part of 
 the rampart, a few yards from me, faintly lighted by 
 the uncertain rays of a flickering street lamp, while 
 over the top of it was just visible what seemed to be 
 a sandy shore, studded here and there with rugged 
 points of protruding rock. Further out, a little to 
 the right, was a huge black mass of granite, the sides 
 of which, from time to time, were almost hidden by 
 cloud-like tongues, rising and falling. Along the shore 
 war, a curving line of uneven whiteness forming as it 
 were the border of a moving mass of dull grey, gradu- 
 
AN INCIDENT AT ST. MALO 
 
 ally toning off into the deep, impenetrable blackness of 
 the night. This, with the howling of the wind, and 
 the clattering of the sand against the panes of glass, 
 enabled me to form a kind of mental picture of the 
 scene which awaited me in the morning. But the 
 picture was nothing to the reality. 
 
 Tired from my journey, I slept soundly and late. 
 I was awakened by the loud banging of a door, accom- 
 panied by the noise of the falling of fragments of 
 broken glass. Jumping out of bed, I ran to the 
 window. Pulling back the curtain I saw a sight which, 
 from its grandeur, I shall never forget, and which, 
 from its immensity, I hardly dare to describe. The 
 sea, which was of a rich dark emerald green, as far as 
 the eye could reach, was rent into great banks of 
 giant swell, not smooth or regular, but torn and 
 broken in angry, restless, heaving, foaming contest, 
 writhing, as it were, in furious agony under the full 
 blast of the storm, dashing themselves into a thousand 
 foaming fragments, over the sharp points of rock 
 which seemed to protrude everywhere from the surface 
 of the water. 
 
 I opened the window. Invigorated by the fresh 
 salt smell of the sea, and by the delightful odour of 
 the torn and broken seaweed, soothed by the harmo- 
 nious mingling of the voices of the people walking on 
 the rampart, with the wild roaring of the tempest, I 
 was soon lost in silent contemplation of this seething 
 mass of inorganic matter, lifeless yet moving, heaving, 
 breaking, thundering in mad confusion. I watched 
 them, these enormous, broken mounds of rolling water, 
 
THE 
 
 ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 INTEODUCTORY 
 
 L'homme devient de plus en plus religieux. — Comte. 
 
 ' Man tends to become more and more religious.' 
 When the great French philosopher, founder of the 
 Religion of Humanity, gave utterance to this pro- 
 found thought, he had already witnessed the progress 
 of the movement to which he owed his place in the 
 history of human aspiration ; and he did but sum up 
 the results, so far as they were known to him, of the 
 constructive efforts which have marked the present 
 century, and of which his own system was the most 
 striking example. 
 
 Towards the end of the preceding period a cold 
 blast of analytic and irreligious criticism had passed 
 over the thinking world, leaving behind it a state of 
 things wherein ' the soul of man [had] become void, 
 and into the void [had] entered the seven devils of 
 secularity.' The Past as a living actuality had been 
 swept away, or remained only as a heaving mass of 
 decomposing material, lifeless yet life-giving, from 
 
 B 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 L'HAPTL'H '' AUE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 1 
 
 I. A Restless Youth. Ormnation 8 
 
 II. The Essay on Indifference 44 
 
 III. The Author goes to Rome 78 
 
 IV. Pope ou Kino i>- 
 
 V. The Revolution of July 1830 11C 
 
 VI. The 'Avenir' . . . l- r >4 
 
 • VII. Appeal to Kome. Condemnation 1!»5 
 
 VIII. The Voice of the People 219 
 
 IX. riiiLOsormc Reconstruction . . . . . . . 273 
 
 X. A Life of Suffering and Devotion. '48 . . . . 29X 
 
 XI. Closing Scknes 333 
 
b THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 as, plunging and hissing in their reckless hurrying 
 towards the coast, the crests of them were frayed by 
 the wind into dense floating clouds of smoke-like 
 spray. I listened to the splashing and the roaring of 
 the surf on the shore, and to the dripping of the water 
 from the storm-lashed parapet. Then looking towards 
 the solitary rock, where, alone and defiant, stands the 
 tomb of Chateaubriand, I saw the waves as they 
 hurled themselves in their mad fury against the solid 
 masses of granite, checked in their wild career, rush 
 with a roar round the cavernous hollows at the base, 
 or else, rising majestically, sweep up the rough sur- 
 face of the rock, until, as if spent in fruitless efforts, 
 the mighty volumes of water could go no further, 
 seemed to pause, and, crashing down again over the 
 loose boulders into the sea below, filled the air with a 
 deafening noise. I saw them, stopped in their upward 
 course by some sharp, uncouth corner of the jutting 
 cragg, broken into a thousand fragments, while, here 
 and there, they found their way, in single streams, to 
 cracks and crannies, worked in the rock by centuries 
 of briny turmoil, and thus, dashing on and mingling 
 with the wind which howled in every cleft and hollow, 
 transformed themselves into flakes of frothy foam v 
 and then, caught up by some angry partial gust, faint 
 echo of the raging storm without, they were torn from 
 their momentary resting place, and blown far inland, 
 there to dissolve, lost in the general warring of the 
 elements. 
 
 And as I watched this heaving, foaming, plunging 
 mass of tormented water, seething and hissing in the 
 
AN INCIDENT AT ST. MALO ' 
 
 endless contest of the waves, suddenly, breaking 
 through the dense though quickly moving darkness of 
 the heavens, a ray from the pale winter sun, flashing 
 down, glanced on the rich emerald of the sea, and, 
 passing on, showed it at every point in turn, varied 
 in snowy white and watery green, veiled, at times, by 
 quickly rolling mists of smoky spray. Then, creeping 
 by, it swept along the ramparts, lighting up for a 
 moment the scattered groups of awestruck watchers, 
 and sank again, leaving all cold, and dark, and wild 
 and stormy as it was before. 
 "T On such a day as this, more than a hundred years 
 ago, there stood on these walls, holding the hand of 
 — his companion, a little boy of eight years old.. His 
 thin, pale face was turned towards the sea, as he 
 watched with deep, sad eyes the fierce battlings of 
 wind and wave, and listened to the angry roaring of 
 the waters. He looked and listened, and in his child- 
 like mind he seemed to ponder some thought beyond 
 his years ; then, turning scornfully towards the groups 
 of men and women standing round, he said to his 
 companion, ' lis regardent ce que je regarde, mais ils 
 ne voient pas ce je vois.' He little thought that the 
 scene he gazed on was a picture of his own life. 
 
 Meditating on this, I drew back and closed the 
 window, and I felt that I was prepared to enter, with 
 a better understanding and a deeper sympathy, into 
 the career of Felicite de Lamennais. 
 
THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A RESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATION 
 
 Eelicite Robert de Lamennais was bom at St. Malo 
 on June 19, 1782, in the house which is now No. 3 
 Rue St.-Vincent. Anyone seeing it for the first time, 
 and knowing nothing of its history, would naturally 
 conclude that this large solid building, standing back 
 from the street, and entered by a courtyard, in strik- 
 ing contrast to its neighbours, must have been owned 
 by a family of some local importance ; and so it was. 
 Tradition tells us of the Roberts, ' that in character 
 they. were doggedly persevering and energetic, a bold 
 and resolute race of men, who had been known on 
 occasion, impelled by their indomitable nature, to 
 resort to strange extremities.' Feli's 1 father, Pierre- 
 Louis Robert de la Mennais, made his fortune as a 
 shipowner, and he seems to have made patriotic use 
 of his wealth — so much so, indeed, that the Estates of 
 Brittany demanded for him, from Louis XVI., letters 
 of nobility, quoting as their reason, besides innume- 
 rable instances of disinterested public action, the 
 special fact that he had once saved the town from 
 starvation, by providing corn at his own expense. 
 The request was granted, and M. Robert was ennobled 
 
 1 The name by which he was familiarly known among his friends. 
 
A RESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATION y 
 
 in 1788, receiving as his coat of arms the suitable 
 emblems, an anchor and an ear of com. It was pro- 
 bably about this time that he added to his family- 
 name the designation of de la Mcnnais, a Breton 
 word meaning mountain. His wife had been a Made- 
 moiselle Lorin, and was, through her mother, of Irish 
 extraction. 1 
 
 From the first Feli was weak and fragile. He 
 nearly died soon after his birth of an internal disease 
 which troubled him all his life. We are told by one 
 who had special facilities for getting to know the 
 family traditions, that 
 
 his features recalled in many ways those of Madame Lorin. 
 He resembled her in his broad high forehead, his thin oval 
 face and high cheek bones, his grey eyes, his thin lips, his 
 slender body. He was under the average height. Of an 
 extraordinary and feverish vivacity, resulting from a nervous, 
 excitable temperament, he was, in childhood, domineering, 
 irritable, and subject to fits of anger, which were often ended 
 by fainting. He kept aloof from the other children, and 
 rarely joined in their games ; a vague feeling of superiority 
 seemed to incline him to solitude. 
 
 When he was seven years old he was suddenly de- 
 prived of that softening influence so necessary in 
 early life, a mother's love and sympathy. Madame 
 de la Mennais died in 1789. In after years he used 
 
 1 ' Thoro were,' says M. Rousscl, ' six children. . . . Louis-Marie 
 was Lorn on September 12, 1776 ; Pierre-Jean on June 24, 1778 ; Jean- 
 Marie on September 8, 1780 ; Felicity on June 19, 1782 ; Marie- Joseph on 
 February 25, 1784 ; and Gratien-Claude on May 2, 1785. 
 
 ' Marie, in 1814, became the wife of Ange Blaize, and had several chil- 
 dren, amongst others Augustine, who in 1836 married M. Elie de Ker- 
 tanguy.' 
 
10 THE ABBE BE LAMENNAIS 
 
 to say that he could only remember two things about 
 her, that he had seen her ' recite her rosary and play 
 on the violin.' After this he became still more sad 
 and reserved, though he seems, from time to time, to 
 have broken through the monotony of his gloomy and 
 isolated existence by unexpected outbursts of daring 
 self-assertion, as in the scene he described to a friend 
 in later life, when he spoke to him ' of an adventurous 
 drifting on the sea in a boat furtively untied, and of 
 the emotions caused him by this perilous defiance of 
 the treacherous waters.' 
 
 Nor was the Kevolution without its influence in 
 the formation of his character. M. de la Mennais, 
 who had, as we have seen, received very special 
 marks of favour from the government of Louis XVI., 
 seems to have gone, outwardly at least, with the 
 times. After the fall of the unfortunate monarch, 
 he is said to have scandalised the good people of 
 .St. Malo by hanging out of one of his ships, as a 
 sign, an emblem of the head of the ex-king, dripping 
 with blood. For this and other, perhaps more sub- 
 stantial, acts of patriotism, he was rewarded by a 
 reputation for good citizenship, and even obtained 
 under the Directory a certificate of civic virtue, 
 valuable at a time when the unquiet state of 
 Brittany rendered its chief towns liable to constant 
 visits from Eepublican armies, accompanied by pro- 
 consular proscriptions of leading citizens. On the 
 other hand, there is evidence which tends to show 
 that the republicanism of the wealthy shipowner 
 was not very deep-rooted — in fact, that it had for its 
 
A KESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATION 
 
 11 
 
 principal motive the preservation of life and pro- 
 perty. Had any of his Kepublican friends been 
 present, on certain days, in a small upper room in 
 the Hotel de la Mennais, they would have been 
 somewhat taken aback by the unexpected picture 
 which would have presented itself to them. There, 
 in the early hours of the morning, they would have 
 seen a group of kneeling worshippers, from time to 
 time timorously glancing round, or starting at the 
 slightest movement in the street below, while, in 
 their midst, standing before an improvised altar, a 
 non-juring priest was saying Mass. They might 
 have noticed one of the sons of the house, Jean- 
 Marie, performing the office of server, while his 
 younger brother, Feli, sat by the door and listened 
 anxiously for the slightest sound. 
 
 Remembering this in after life, associating with 
 his earliest thoughts at a time when, at the dawning 
 of intelligence, the mind expands, in sympathetic 
 longing to every new impression, these stealthy 
 communings with God, threatened by the jealous 
 watchfulness of a vigilant police, the labours of the 
 venerable priest, carried on at the risk of his life, it 
 is not surprising that the young Feli should have 
 conceived an incurable hatred of the Revolution. 
 
 Yet this was not the most serious result of the 
 disorganised state of society in which he grew up. 
 The whole system of education, which had been 
 largely in the hands of ecclesiastical bodies, had 
 been shattered in the over-hasty progressiveness of 
 the early revolutionists, and the administrative con- 
 
12 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 fusion which reigned everywhere, together with the 
 continuous warring of parties in Paris, made im- 
 possible, for a time at least, the establishment of 
 anything to take its place. This being so, the boy's 
 education was undertaken by his uncle Eobert des 
 Saudrais. 
 
 The task does not seem to have been an easy 
 one. The self-willed Feli was industrious enough, 
 but he liked to set about a thing in his own way. 
 In learning Latin, for instance, he seems to have 
 objected to the technical preliminaries. Looking 
 over one of his early note-books, M. Blaize came 
 upon some amusing evidences of these youthful 
 stragglings. 
 
 ' Noe eut trois fils, Shem, Cham et Japhet : 
 Noemus habuit tres filius, Shemus, Chamus et 
 Japhetus. — Ces arbres sont tres bien fleuris : Hi 
 arbores sunt optimi floridi. — Ce theme a ete fait par 
 moi : Hie scriptio f actus est ab ego.' And at the 
 bottom of the page : ' My uncle is angry with me, 
 because I will not read over my rules before doing 
 my work.' Opposite is an epigram on the monks : 
 ' Facere officiurn talitar qualiter, sinere tempus ire 
 ut vult ire, et semper benedicere de domino Priori.' 
 And underneath : ' Panurge, who could speak ten 
 languages, knew of sixty -three ways of making 
 money, the most honest of which was stealing it.' 
 In the same note-book there is a suggestive English 
 quotation : ' You must know that i am very well 
 descended : my ancestors have made some noise in 
 the world. For my mother cried oysters, and my 
 
A RESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATION 13 
 
 father beat a drum : i am told we even had some 
 trumpeters in our family.' 
 
 When Feli's rebelliousness proved more than he 
 could cope with, his uncle used to lock him up in 
 the library, a punishment which he soon came to 
 like, and which he tried to earn as often as possible, 
 with the result that, at an early age, he read 
 everything without restriction. Diderot, Voltaire, 
 Eousseau, were studied with eagerness, but the last 
 seems to have made the deepest impression on him. 
 It is not, then, surprising that, when, at the age of 
 twelve, an attempt was made to prepare him for his 
 first communion, he should have poured forth, at the 
 second lesson of the catechism, such a volume of 
 incredulity that the good priest retired gasping with 
 astonishment and grief. 
 
 Of the next few years of his life but little is 
 known. 
 
 One day [says M. Forgues, the friend of his last years] 
 he spoke at some length of a trip to Paris with his father, 
 under the Directory. It had come back to his memory 
 a propos of some discussion on liberty and its compatibility 
 with order. In this respect the Paris of 1796 had made 
 a deep impression on him. 'Never,' he said, 'has the 
 like of it been seen," and he described the gaiety of a 
 people given over to itself, the absence of all constraint 
 and of all police, or, at least, of any that made itself felt, 
 opinions uttered freely everywhere, the arena of journalism 
 open to all who wished to enter it. ' So much so,' he 
 added, ' that 1 myself, at the age of fourteen, managed to 
 get one or two articles into some obscure paper.' 
 
 We are also told that, with his faith, he lost the 
 
14 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 innocence of his first years. He seems to have 
 struck out wildly in every direction, seeking vaguely 
 and without guidance for an outlet for that burning 
 thirst for action which followed . him through his 
 whole career, goading him on. His father, who had 
 lost the greater part of his fortune in the troubles of 
 the Revolution, and who had not much to leave him, 
 wished him to learn to earn a living for himself. He 
 set him to work in his office, with the intention of 
 ultimately making over the business to him. Feli 
 submitted to this, but he spent all his spare time in 
 study and in other forms of intellectual activity. He 
 conceived a passion for mathematics, languages, and 
 music. He belonged to a musical society at St. Malo, 
 where he excelled in playing the flute. Nor did he 
 despise the noble art of fencing, and he became 
 skilled with the rapier. He even fought a duel, and 
 it is on record that he wounded his adversary. From 
 time to time he seems to have determined to settle 
 down to his work, and schemes for making his for- 
 tune were matured in his brain. There is a published 
 letter in which he speaks of a privateer fitted out by 
 some friends of his ; he has a share in it, and believes 
 that it will bring in a large booty. But, on the whole, 
 he seems to have been bored with business, and, 
 indeed, with his home surroundings. He had reached 
 the age of nineteen, and was in the full swing of this 
 kind of life when he said : ' Ennui was born in the 
 family circle, on a winter evening.' In fact, so 
 utterly disgusted had he become with the inanity 
 and aimlessness of his existence that he wrote a 
 
A RESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATION 15 
 
 letter to a cousin of his, setting forth the idea of 
 emigration to the colonies, where he might succeed 
 in working out a career for himself. Fortunately 
 this half -formed resolution was not acted upon, and 
 he remained to fulfil his mission to France and to 
 the world. 
 
 What that mission was to be he knew not, and as 
 yet no thought of it had entered his mind. He had 
 already, it is true, found employment for his pen, but 
 those early articles of his, could they be traced, would 
 probably hardly repay the trouble of looking for them, 
 while the poetical attempts which have come down 
 to us, and whose constant theme is love and nature, 
 a fact which is suggestive enough, have no particular 
 merit in themselves, and contain very little that is 
 interesting from a biographical point of view. On 
 the other hand, there is one little work which must 
 be mentioned here, throwing as it does considerable 
 light both on the author's state of mind at this 
 period and on the influences which had contributed 
 to the formation of his character and the evolution 
 of his thought. It is a criticism of a harmless 
 custom which sprang, indirectly at least, from the 
 Eevolution. 
 
 As soon as the Consulate had restored the admini- 
 strative regularity and respect for law which had 
 been somewhat shaken by the series of upheavals 
 through which France had passed, the wealthy 
 bourgeois municipalities, composed of respectable 
 citizens, who had been fortunate enough to come out 
 of the process alive, and with their pockets not quite 
 
16 THE ABBE BE LAMENNAIS 
 
 empty, began to congratulate themselves on what 
 had happened, and to speak and act as if the whole 
 movement had been carried out by and for them- 
 selves. One of the most curious results of this was 
 that the later months of the consular rigime and the 
 early years of the empire were marked in most of the 
 French towns by the renaming of streets, an inexpen- 
 sive though effective way of doing honour to the 
 heroes of philosophy and literature. At some time, 
 probably in 1805, the municipal council of St. Malo 
 decided to follow the example of its neighbours. This 
 was the occasion of a scathing satire from the pen of 
 Feli. It is not known how or where it was published, 
 but a fragment of it was found, in manuscript, among 
 the papers of the late Superior of the Oratory at 
 Eennes, and has been given to the public by M. 
 Koussel in a recent work. 
 
 'A curious report,' says the author, 'has come to 
 us from St. Malo. It is said that it has been pro- 
 posed to exhume all that the town has produced in 
 notable men of every variety, and to post up one of 
 them in every street.' The honour, it is true, is a 
 doubtful one, but admitting the wisdom of the plan 
 proposed by the council they should be careful in 
 their choice. Now, it has been suggested that ' to 
 the La Bourdonaies, the Cartiers, the Dugue-Trouins, 
 there should be added a man whose family has for 
 some time enjoyed a well-merited esteem, the whole 
 of which he has unselfishly left to them, for assuredly 
 he has kept none of it for himself : I speak of La 
 Mettrie.' It was suggested at the council that he 
 
- " A RESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATION 17 
 
 _\vas ' a fool, a mountebank, a vile minion of the Court, 
 without morals, without religion, without a God.' It 
 was answered that he was a philosopher, and that 
 the accusations about him were scandals invented by 
 the priests. . . . ' I am not a priest, so perhaps I 
 may be allowed to give my opinion. 
 
 But no ; I prefer that you should have that of Voltaire, 
 for neither, I think, was he a priest. ' Have you,' he wrote, 
 ' have you ever heard speak of a doctor called La Mettrie, 
 an honest atheist, a celebrated glutton ? His ideas are in a 
 constant firework state, incessantly going off like squibs. 
 He has just got published at Potsdam a work in which he 
 condemns virtue and praises vice, invites his readers to every 
 kind of immorality, and this with the best intentions in the 
 
 world God preserve me from employing him as my 
 
 doctor : he would give me some sublimated corrosive instead 
 of rhubarb, innocently enough, and then would laugh at the 
 result.' 
 
 I "wish, gentlemen, that I could stop here ; I really feel 
 what your tenderness for your illustrious compatriot must 
 make you suffer, for the man who speaks is not a divot. 
 But you may reassure yourselves : I shall be discreet ; just 
 one more passage. 
 
 Then follows another quotation from the same 
 writer, after which our young author continues : — 
 
 Few, perhaps, are aware to what we owe these fine 
 testimonies of the great Lama of Ferney. Oh, miracle of 
 philosophic providence ! La Mettrie, as a simple doctor, 
 would only have poisoned his fellow-countrymen ; but La 
 Mettrie, become a citizen of the world, owed himself to the 
 human race, and he paid his debt by his writings. But 
 what was the origin of this high destiny '? Alas ! a woman's 
 head ; and yet there are people who say that women have 
 no heads. The father of our philosopher, one day, like the 
 stork in the fable, determined to entertain his friends. La 
 
 C 
 
18 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 Mettrie, who apparently did not like plain broth, and who, 
 though a simple assistant at a hospital, had developed a 
 taste for experiments, thought he would strengthen the soup 
 with the leavings of a dissection at which he had been 
 present in the morning. The head of a woman, adroitly 
 slipped into the pot, while the cook was looking the other 
 way, prepared for her a great surprise, and, for the guests, a 
 dish novel enough at least in those days. But there is no 
 
 accounting for tastes : this soup was not liked and 
 
 our young anatomist, nobly incensed, and, perhaps too, 
 a little frightened at the reception his first experiments met 
 with in his native place, prudently retired to Berlin, where 
 a fatal fit of indigestion soon proved, in spite of his reason- 
 ings, that he was neither a plant nor a machine. Now, 
 whatever may be said to the contrary, without the head and 
 without that journey, La Mettrie had probably remained 
 unknown to Voltaire and to Europe. 
 
 Then follows a quotation from Diderot, in the 
 middle of which the manuscript suddenly breaks off, 
 leaving us to imagine as best we may the further 
 developments and the conclusion of this fantastic 
 little squib. Of its immediate influence on the popu- 
 lation and on the municipal council history tells us 
 nothing, but there is a fact which is more eloquent 
 than history. It is immortalised on stone and may 
 still be seen at the corner of the Rue la Mettrie at 
 St. Malo. 
 
 But, whatever may have been its fate with the 
 public, the pamphlet was certainly appreciated by one 
 whose opinion its author had learned to respect, and 
 who probably looked on it as the first step in the 
 career of a Voltaire or of a Rabelais — M. des Saudrais, 
 or ' Tonton,' as he was familiarly called by the two 
 
A RESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATION 19 
 
 brothers. There is a letter from him in 1806 to the 
 younger of them, in which he says : ' I have read 
 your little satire, my dear Feli. Nothing could be 
 better. It is clear and precise. That is- the multa in 
 panels I recommended to you. He who can write thus 
 knows his subject.' And further on in the same 
 letter : ' This little work, which I am sending back to 
 you, is really the best thing you have done. Je crois 
 que tu irais loin sur ce chemin-la., et, peut-etre, au 
 
 boutdu chemin. But your health, your health ! 
 
 Who is hurrying you ? Your whole life is before you. 
 
 " I have done nothing to-day." Have you not 
 
 lived ? ' 
 
 These last words indicate a change which was 
 coming about in the life and prospects of the young 
 De la Mennais, who had finally resolved to settle down 
 to his books and to give up all idea of succeeding 
 his father in his business, thus inaugurating those 
 years of painful toilings and battlings with himself 
 and with the world from which, after many alter- 
 nations between doubtful victories and almost hopeless 
 defeats, after more than one recurrence of those 
 terrible fits of despondency which crushed him to the 
 earth, and held him for days and weeks, as it were, 
 lying in the dust, be was finally to emerge suddenly, 
 and in the full glory of his genius, as a writer and as a 
 thinker. At the moment at which we have arrived 
 he was on the eve of his first great struggle. 
 
 I have already alluded to the touching picture of 
 Jean-Marie de la Mennais serving at Mass, in the 
 silence and mystery of a small upper room, under the 
 
20 THE ABBE DE LAMENKAIS 
 
 Terror. From his earliest childhood, no doubt, no 
 obstacle seems to have crossed his path, or to have 
 turned him aside for an instant from his vocation. 
 When, in the early years of the Kevolution, he heard 
 that the bishop was about to fly the country, he said 
 to him : ' Monseigneur, you are my bishop, I want to 
 be a priest, and I will follow you ! ' And he was only 
 kept back with difficulty. It was he who was the 
 cause of his father's house becoming a refuge for the 
 holy man, who fulfilled there the office of his ministry 
 all through those trying times. He had met him 
 walking about disguised as a fisherman, and had 
 asked him to come in, adding : ' Won't you stay 
 always with us ? I will serve your Mass every day. 
 I, too, want to become a priest. I shall devote 
 myself to this religion which they wish to destroy.' 
 When the bishop came back from exile it was told 
 him that Jean de la Mennais wished to prepare for 
 ordination. As they happened to be in Paris the 
 good man took him to the Eue Vaugirard, and, 
 bringing him into a church, he said to him : ' We 
 are in the chapel of what was formerly the abbey of 
 the Carmelites. On this very spot, just nine years 
 ago, a number of priests and bishops were cut down 
 or shot, in hatred of the faith.' Here you can see 
 the marks of blood which have not yet disappeared, 
 and the executioners are still living. Do you think 
 that they will not begin again ? ' And Jean answered : 
 ' With the grace of God, Monseigneur, I shall have 
 strength.' In .December 1801 he received sub- 
 deacon's orders, and three years later he proceeded 
 
A UESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATION 21 
 
 to the priesthood. In the same year he persuaded 
 his brother, who had reached the age of twenty-two, 
 to make his first Communion. 
 
 Soon after this his health broke down through 
 over- work as a vicaire at St. Male' His father advised 
 him to go with Feli to Paris, where they might see a 
 good doctor. They passed the spring of 1806 in the 
 capital, and they were told that both of them were 
 suffering from over-work. In July they returned to 
 St. Malo, in which place they got gradually better. 
 They had been recommended ' country air, a regime 
 of milk, much exercise, and very little intellectual 
 work.' It is needless to say that this last piece of 
 advice was lost on them. Their uncle Tonton had 
 constantly to write to them to warn them against 
 over-reading, against trying to furnish their minds 
 before they had formed them, pointing out to them 
 the advantage of the multa in jntucis alluded to in 
 the letter quoted above. 'What was the result of 
 their imprudence we are not told, but we are not 
 surprised to find the Abbe Jean writing in August 
 1807 : ' We have retired (Feli and I) to a country 
 house of ours, situated some miles from Dinan, and 
 we have forbidden ennui to come near us. So far it 
 has not dared once to knock at our door. But health 
 has not been so docile. However, I am not worse 
 than I was, and the doctor thinks that not to be 
 worse is to be better.' 
 
 It is not too much to say that this illness led to 
 the conversion of Feli. We can imagine him, tired 
 and disgusted with the variety and the aimlessness 
 
22 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 of the life he had led, meditating on the past, or, 
 perhaps, turning his thoughts vaguely to the future 
 as he lingered in the shady woods at La Chenaie, 
 wandering over the soft greensward, picking his way 
 among the mossy roots of the trees while he listened 
 to the rustling of the autumn leaves and to the soft 
 murmuring of the wind in the branches. We can 
 think of him in the evening as he strolled with his 
 brother by the pond at the bottom of the garden, 
 where no human voice could reach them, and where 
 their conversatiou was undisturbed by any sound 
 save the cracking of the twigs under their feet, the 
 twittering of the birds in the trees, the tapping of 
 the wood-pecker, the croaking of the frogs in the 
 pond, the incessant buzzing of the gnats, or the 
 humming of the myriads of winged insects which 
 swarmed round the falling leaves, or worried, in 
 thirsty expectancy, the fading petals of the dying 
 flowers. What a contrast to the life he had been 
 leading ! To the noise and din, to the excitement 
 of the world he had left behind him ! Add to this 
 the arguments, the reasonings, the enthusiasm, the 
 burning sympathy, above all the example of his holy 
 brother, and it is not difficult to understand the 
 change winch came over his mind. And, to Feli 
 de la Mennais, no half measures were possible. 
 When he turned his back upon the past, his whole 
 nature seems to have been shaken by a violent 
 reaction. Unfortunately, there is no immediate 
 evidence of what took place, but there are two 
 letters, written soon afterwards, which we cannot 
 
A RESTLESS TOUTII. ORDINATION 23 
 
 read without a shudder at the terrible, almost hope- 
 less struggle to which they bear witness. The first 
 of them is dated March 17, 1809. In it he says:— 
 
 Oh ! Too deeply have I loved the bitter joys of the 
 world, the consolations of the world, the hopes of the 
 world ! Now, I wish only for the cross, the cross alone, 
 the cross of Jesus. ... I shall live on Calvary in a spirit 
 of love, of denial of self, of sacrifice. Oh ! what a life ! 
 What a sweet, what a happy life ! My only desire is to be 
 crucified with Jesus by suffering, by contradiction, by con- 
 tempt, in rebuffs, in ingratitudes and hatreds, in outrages, 
 in persecutions, in everything which may crucify my heart 
 and my flesh. ... I must drink long draughts from the 
 holy cup of humiliation. My God ! My God ! Once more, 
 the cross, the cross and nothing but the cross ! 
 
 The second letter is undated, but M. Roussel 
 places it somewhere between 1808 and 1810. The 
 Abbe Brute had evidently written to him about some 
 work of his, possibly the ' Reflexions sur l'etat de 
 l'Eglise.' We can imagine what this pious though 
 perhaps too mystical priest had said to him ; indeed, 
 it is written in every line of the answer : — 
 
 Ah ! you are right ; a single page, a single line, a single 
 word of St. Francois de Sales or of the ' Imitation ' is worth 
 more than all these controversial pamphlets, which can but 
 crush and dry up the soul, . . . Pray, my tender brother, 
 pray, I implore you, for the miserable wretch, who should 
 be, nay, who is, I say it in the deepest sincerity, filled with 
 confusion at having even thought of raising his voice in the 
 Church, for him whom the ancient Church would hardly 
 have admitted to the number of its penitents, and whose 
 life cannot be long enough to expiate a single one of bis 
 sins. . . . Oh ! This is the result of my bad beginning, this 
 
24 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 is the consequence of my first wanderings. Where shall I 
 stop? Alas! God knows. . . . Who shall grant me to 
 enter like you, my dear friend, that night of faith, where 
 are lost the vain phantoms of self-love and imagination ! 
 Who shall pour on my dried-up lips some drops of those 
 pure, life-giving waters which spring up eternally from the 
 fountain of love ! sweet fountain, fountain of gladness, 
 of happiness and of peace, I see thee far off, as through a 
 mist, and my heart, in its misery, is worn out with desire 
 and faints in the ardour with which it would plunge and 
 be lost for ever in thy mystical depths. 
 
 Dear friend, I do not know what will become of 
 me. ... I wish to remain in the hands of Providence as a 
 little child. . . . Nevertheless, it seems to me that solitude 
 WMild be good for me ; I think I hear a voice which calls 
 me to the desert : others shall decide, and for me it only 
 remains to say from the depths of my soul : Ecce venio ut 
 faciam, Deus, voluntatem tuam. 
 
 What a background of internal misery and of 
 black, hopeless despair is here revealed to us. This 
 sudden resolution, half formed it is true, yet after- 
 wards supported by all the intensity of his deep, 
 impressionable nature, gave his friends reason to fear 
 for his mental stability, and it is not improbable that 
 the strain might have proved too great, and that 
 some fatal catastrophe might have ensued, had not 
 his inborn passion for work turned these outbursts 
 from the smouldering fires of immature genius, foi 
 a time at least, into other and safer channels. 
 
 Before entering into a description of his life and 
 work at La Chenaie, it will be necessary to mention 
 a circumstance of considerable import in the de- 
 velopment of this story. In February, 1809, the 
 Abbe Jean wrote to Brute from St. Malo, asking him 
 
A RESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATION 25 
 
 whether the ordination was to take place in the first 
 week in Lent, as his brother wished to make his 
 arrangements. He added : ' Papa does not know of 
 his -resolution, and will not hear of it till the mo- 
 ment is come for carrying it out . . . please keep 
 my brother's secret till you hear from me again; 
 speak of it only to God.' After this we hear that 
 Feli received minor orders on December 23, 1809. 
 His state of mind did not allow him to go further, 
 and, for the present, the matter remained at this 
 point. This fact being noted, we may return to La 
 Chenaie. 
 
 It has been said of Lamennais that, though a 
 wide, he was not a deep reader, that there was no 
 order or method in his studies, and that his work all 
 along bore traces of the time when, as a punish- 
 ment, he was locked into the library by his uncle. 
 This I should be inclined to doubt, for reasons which 
 I shall now lay before my readers ; but there is one 
 criticism which is not without a certain amount of 
 truth. ' Forced,' says M. Fen-ay, 1 ' to live in the 
 wilds of Brittany ... in the uncouth solitude of La 
 Chenaie, he did not learn to know society with the 
 diversity and the wealth of detail which it presents 
 to the observer.' If, however, he neglected this im- 
 portant element in mental training, and, as we shall 
 see, with the most fatal results on his later career 
 he did his best to make up for it in other ways. 
 
 Fumbling [says M. Forgues] among the piles of docu- 
 ments which, by his will, have come into my hands, when I 
 
 1 Professor of Philosophy in the Faculte des Lettres at Lyons, quoted 
 by Ricard. 
 
26 THE ABBE DE LAMENNA1S 
 
 examine those in which the coarse, bluish paper and the 
 faded ink indicate a far-off origin, I find traces of im- 
 placable study. I hold in my hand a translation of the 
 CEdipus Tyrannus ; the margins are covered with notes : — 
 Ood^eiv, to hasten to seat oneself. Ten lines on 8od£eiv. 
 The next note-book, a model of caligraphy, is an extract 
 from Viger's ' Principal Idioms of the Greek Language.' 
 Here is a table of conjugations. The energetic aorist or 
 paragogic future of Erpenius appears in it beside the 
 apocopated future. Then comes a plan for an Arabic 
 grammar. . . . Another manuscript bears the title : Rules 
 for the changes -of the vowel j)0JMis i >l masculine sub- 
 stantives ; these masculine substantives are Hebrew. The 
 next treats of accents, after Buxtorf — the tonic and 
 euphonic accent, the o^vtovos and the trapo^i/Tovos of the 
 Greeks, which the Hebrews called . . . 
 
 In 1809 we find him writing to the Abbe Jean on 
 a series of fundamental questions. It is evident that 
 he has faith in his brother's superior knowledge. He 
 asks : — 
 
 Geology : What must we think of these superimposed 
 strata, formed of shells which differ from the known kinds 
 in proportion as they are distant from the surface of the 
 ground? Chronology : Which text must we follow, the 
 Hebrew or the Septuagint ? Creation : Can we do without 
 the system of Deluc, which treats the six days as six 
 indefinite periods of time ? Criticism : What are the works 
 which are essential, and those which are merely useful, and 
 in what degree V What does M. Gamier think of Masclef's 
 system of reading ? Is the knowledge of Masoretic points 
 indispensable ? Note the best books on Oriental languages. 
 Plan of study, method, &c. 
 
 In the same year he asks his brother to send him 
 ' the Essai sur la ^remibre formation ties langues, d-c, 
 
A RESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATION 2i 
 
 translation from the English of Adam Smith, also 
 the Becherches sur la langne et la philosophic des 
 Indiens, analysis and translation from the German of 
 F. Schlegel.' In another letter he says : — ' Send me 
 G-uarin's Hebrew Grammar, 2 vols, in 4to. I have 
 been using your room since yesterday. I can hear 
 nothing there but the wind and the noise of my own 
 footsteps. . . .' These extracts (and they might be 
 multiplied indefinitely) are, I think, sufficient evidence 
 that his reading was neither shallow nor wanting in 
 method. On the other hand, there is sometimes a 
 certain apparent lightness of treatment in dealing 
 with works which he has hardly looked at, or which 
 he has seen reviewed, resulting, not so much from 
 want of profundity as from a quickness of perception 
 and over-confidence in himself, which is not neces- 
 sarily a grievous fault., Witness this letter to 
 M. Querret ; it is dated 1814 :— 
 
 What is this book on probabilities by M. de Laplace '? 
 Have you read it ? As it is very probable that I shall not 
 do so, I should like to know what one ought to think of it, 
 and, above all, whether his theory can be usefully applied. 
 I imagine that he has tried to bring under his system moral 
 and historic probabilities, and perhaps even supernatural 
 facts, so that his book, or his formula), may be looked on as 
 a kind of geometrical profession of faith. It seems to me 
 that his subject must force him to go thus far : if he has 
 fallen short of this, he has more common sense than I gave 
 him credit for. It is a pity that the newspapers do not 
 contain more about scientific works. One would like to 
 follow the human mind in all its paths even where it is 
 mistaken, to observe it in any of the forms it may take, 
 though these are sometimes curious enough. Between our- 
 
28 THE ABBE DE LAMEXNAIS 
 
 selves, how supremely entertaining are its great efforts and 
 its little devices for hiding from itself its profound ignorance 
 and its utter helplessness. One laughs at them, or at least 
 one smiles, and one is inclined to say with the poet : 
 Homunculi quanti sunt cum recogito ! ' 
 
 But Feli de la Mennais did not confine his studies 
 to the domain of history, languages, physical science, 
 and Biblical criticism. He relieved the monotony 
 of his work by turning from time to time to the 
 writings of the great French, and sometimes of 
 German, metaphysicians. In the Malebranches, the 
 Descartes', the Leibnitz', he found congenial food 
 for that taste for speculation which was a second 
 nature to him. This was comparatively harmless, so 
 long as he wandered in those regions which are the 
 only legitimate domain of purely abstract thought, 
 but it became very dangerous when he attempted to 
 descend with it to the earth and to apply it to the 
 practical things of this world. Thus we are not 
 surprised to find a warning letter from his uncle 
 < Tonton ' :— 
 
 What a thing it is [he writes] to be able to stir up 
 passion ! Yours for Bonald quite gives him over to me. ' I 
 should not like him,' you say, ' to transform his monarchy 
 into a despotism.' But that is the kernel of his whole doc- 
 trine ; it is just there that I find the weak point in his sys- 
 tem. ... No doubt his book will live, but it will not be 
 widely read. . . . Even when he is right, bis rightness is 
 too inaccessible and too absolute. It is the fault of meta- 
 physicians .... they always think that they have got the 
 truth. . . . How could they question what is infallibly 
 demonstrated to them? And yet, these infallible demon- 
 
 1 Flautus, Captivi (prologue). 
 
A RESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATIOX 29 
 
 strations are often but illusions. . . . There is not a single 
 great metaphysician who could not be cited in proof of this 
 assertion. ... It is only natural. They leave things and 
 run after causes. . . . They build as well on the void as on 
 the solid, and out of nothing as when they use matter. 
 However .... these people have a right to astonish us by 
 the breadth and by the depth of their conceptions, and when 
 they unite with this, as did Malcbranche, that force of imagi- 
 nation, that magnificence of expression, we must admire and 
 be silent .... for, where genius passes, it draws you, it 
 drags you along, and it carries you where it will. . . . Your 
 logic, my dear Feb, is very rigid, very severe, and very ruth- 
 less. Could you not soften it a little ? 
 
 But these days of preparation were not all passed 
 in such congenial occupations. In 1807 the Abbe 
 Jean had been appointed Vicar General of the diocese 
 of St. Brieuc, and, as soon as his health permitted it, 
 he had gone to the scone of his new duties, leaving 
 to- his brother the sole responsibility for the manage- 
 ment of La Chenaie. Thus the labours of maturing 
 genius were picturesquely varied by details of house 
 and farm work, as well as by the usual practical 
 anxieties entailed in looking after the property. vVe 
 smile when he tells us that he has had to cut down 
 the wages of all the servants, that they have not 
 grumbled very much, and when he continues writing 
 to his brother : — 
 
 I have just settled with the gardener of whom I spoke 
 to you, and who was brought here by the man who fulfils 
 the same function at La Buparais. This last would have 
 liked to come to us himself, but he could not resist the 
 entreaties of Madame de la Buparais, who wanted to keep 
 him. Ours is a young man of twenty-four. He has been 
 
30 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 earning in his present place 156 francs, and he has had half 
 the product of the vegetables. We shall have no vegetables 
 to sell, and can only pay him 140 francs. He seems satis- 
 fied, and I think we shall like him. 
 
 Then there is a pleasant odour of fresh-cut wood, 
 prosaically mingled with bricks and mortar, in the 
 following : — 
 
 I shall not send any wood to St. Malo, for the bad would 
 not sell there, and we want the good for the chapel. ... I 
 have drawn a little plan of the last, which you shall see ; I 
 think it will do. It would not be a long business with 
 workmen who had any activity in thein ; but ours are slow- 
 ness itself, especially the masons. Tempus et patientia. . . . 
 Please find out how much the plasterer in St. Malo charges 
 by the toise, if they are supplied with everything; also how 
 much plaster is required for a toise of ceiling ; as it is ex- 
 pensive, I am having lime mixed with it. 
 
 We cannot but be amused at this woeful descrip- 
 tion of the unpleasant results of riding over the rough 
 country roads : — 
 
 I have just come from Plesder, very headachy. Really 
 our parish is too far off. On Friday I doubted whether I 
 should be able to go over there to-day, I was so broken and 
 flayed, and besides I had begun to spit blood, but that did 
 
 not last That was the trouble I spoke to you of, and 
 
 I should have taken care not to mention it had the least trace 
 of it remained. The worst of all ce sont mes fesses, a qui, 
 pour comble de malheur, je ne puis dire leurs verites en face. 
 
 On the other hand, this period is not wanting in 
 literary interest. To it belong the Bcfiexions sur 
 Vdtat de VEglise en France, 1808 ; the Guide spirituel, 
 1809, and the Tradition de VEglise sur V institution 
 des cveques, the publication of which was deferred for 
 
A RESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATION 31 
 
 reasons which will presently appear. These works 
 were the joint production of the two brothers. The 
 raw material, as a rule, was supplied by the Abbe 1 
 Jean, while the arrangement and composing were 
 done by Feli. Of the Guide it is sufficient to say 
 that it was the result of a long familiarity with the 
 meditations of a Benedictine mystic of the sixteenth 
 century. The Reflexions appeared at the time when 
 Napoleon was preparing for his great conflict with 
 the Church and with Pius VII., and it may be re- 
 garded as the first indication of the ardent Ultra- 
 montanism which was afterwards to characterise the 
 writings of De la Mennais. The authors suggested a 
 series of reforms, calculated to breathe new life into 
 the dry bones of oilicial State Catholicism, and it is 
 not surprising that the book should have been badly 
 received by the Imperial Government, in spite of its 
 incidental praise of ' the man of genius who has just 
 restored to France monarchy and religion.' It was 
 seized by the police. 
 
 The Tradition, as its title suggests, was occa- 
 sioned by a later phase in the struggle. 
 
 The story of the brutal conduct of Napoleon, and 
 of the heroic resistance of the Holy Pontiff, who 
 maintained his ground till he was literally broken in 
 mind and body, has so often been told that it need 
 not be repeated here ; but there are one or two cir- 
 cumstances of which I must remind my readers. 
 Failing in his attempt to win over the Pope, the 
 Emperor resolved to try what he could do with the 
 bishops, who were more directly under his sway, and 
 
32 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 most of whom were his nominees. He called them 
 together in what he called a national council, and 
 used what means he could to force them into giving 
 their sanction to the measures he proposed to them. 
 When they resisted he bethought himself of the 
 odious device of calling on them separately for their 
 signatures, hut even here he was hardly more suc- 
 cessful. We can imagine the enthusiasm with which 
 the news was ■ received by those French Catholics 
 who, while pining for freedom, had not dared openly 
 to make their voices heard in the ominous silence 
 which reigned everywhere. It was now that Feli 
 wrote to his brother (La Chenaie, 1811) : — ' How 
 Providence plays with human passions, and with the 
 power of men who are called great ! There was one 
 who had forced the world to bow before him, and, sud- 
 denly, some poor bishops saying simply " I cannot " 
 brojce that power, which thought that nothing could 
 stand before it . . . in his very capital, at the seat 
 of his empire. How grand ! How divine ! ' He 
 then asks Jean to bring him a rosary, and adds : 
 ' Aie soin de le faire choisir tel que les Gloria patri 
 soient aises a reconnaltre au tact.' 
 
 But Napoleon was in earnest. The Pope had 
 refused to institute his bishops, and he was deter- 
 mined to proceed without him. When the Arch- 
 bishop of Paris died he tried to get someone to take 
 his place. Unfortunately it was no easy matter to find 
 anyone willing to accept the honour and dignity of the 
 position at the expense of his conscience and his repu- 
 tation, and the Emperor was somewhat embarrassed. 
 
A HESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATION 33 
 
 But help came from an unexpected quarter. Cardinal 
 Maury, who had distinguished himself in the Con- 
 stituent Assembly by his faithfulness to the monarchy 
 and to the Holy See, who had emigrated to Eome, 
 where he had used his influence in bringing down 
 ecclesiastical censures on the different phases of the 
 Revolution, and who had been rewarded for his zeal 
 and devotion with a cardinal's hat, now came forward 
 and declared himself willing to accept the position. 
 As a result, there was offered to the world the scandal 
 of an archbishop repudiated by the Pope and unre- 
 cognised by his clergy. These events called forth 
 from the brothers De la Mennais the Tradition cle 
 VEglise surf Institution des Eveques. 
 
 As in the case of the other works I have men- 
 tioned, the materials had been for the most part 
 collected by the Abbe Jean, while the composing was 
 done by Feli, and this part of the work was by no 
 means easy, for the writer had not as yet attained to 
 that. knowledge of, or confidence in, his own powers 
 which marked him in his later life. For the moment 
 his brother is all, he is nothing. Thus he writes in 
 1811 :— 
 
 It seems that each clay only brings with it a deeper 
 conviction of my perfect ineptitude. I can neither study, 
 nor compose, nor act ; I can do nothing. This absolute 
 incapacity is beginning to reconcile me to the utter useless- 
 ness of my life. I cannot bury in the ground or put out to 
 interest a talent which I have not received. What am I 
 fit for ? Suffering perhaps ; that must be the way in which 
 I am intended to glorify God. But I must not complain of 
 my lot. 
 
 D 
 
34 TIIE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 In 1810 he had written : — 
 
 In speaking of St. John Chrysostom, I have brought in 
 very well I think what Dom Constant says of the liberalism 
 of the first Popes ... I have got to Nestorius, and I am at 
 page 90. I could never have finished at St. Malo — I see 
 this more and more every day — and even here I am not 
 getting on very brilliantly. The thing that drives me wild 
 is the uniformity of the whole business ; one must con- 
 tinually keep saying the same things, and then there is the 
 difficulty of bringing all this into any kind of shape ; but that 
 is in the nature of the work. 
 
 And in the same year there is a letter written in wild 
 distraction : — 
 
 Since you left I have hardly begun the last division of 
 the first part. I cannot get on. After having sweated 
 profusely for an hour I find myself precisely at the same 
 point. Besides, the subject itself stops me. We must talk 
 over it together before I do anything more. 
 
 When the book was finished its publication was 
 prevented by the imperial police, who could not look 
 with favour on this marshalling of accumulated facts 
 in support of the rights of the Pope in the institution 
 of bishops. It did not appear till after the fall of 
 Napoleon in 1814. When it was given to the public 
 it drew the attention of the world to the intrepid 
 champions of the spiritual power, exciting the 
 enthusiasm of the clergy and the suspicion of the 
 governing classes ; but as a literary work it does not 
 seem to have had much success. There is probably 
 a delicate vein of condolence in the words of the 
 Abbe Teysseyre in September of that year when he 
 wrote : ' I no longer hear anyone speak of your work ; 
 
A RESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATION 35 
 
 finding it impossible to refute it, they wish to forget 
 it.' Nevertheless, this book was of great personal 
 importance to its author ; in a sense it became the 
 instrument of fate which drew him, perhaps in spite 
 of himself, to a step, the results of which, as a 
 blessing or as a curse, were to follow him through the 
 rest of his life. 
 
 Napoleon returned from Elba in the spring of 
 1815, and it was felt that it would not be long before 
 measures were taken against the author of so daring 
 an attack on his policy. - To shield his brother, whose 
 responsible position at St. Brieuc made him an easy 
 object for attack, Feli retired to London, where he 
 lived for some months under the assumed name of 
 Patrick Robertson. Of his doings in the English 
 capital many interesting anecdotes are told, and of 
 these not the least entertaining is the one in which 
 it is related that when he was recommended to a 
 lady as tutor to her children she hardly waited to 
 hear what he had to say for himself, but dismissed 
 him at once because, as she said, ' he looked too 
 stupid.' 
 
 But it is from a more serious point of view that 
 this residence in a Protestant centre is especially 
 interesting. 
 
 Coming thus to a strange country, and finding 
 himself among a people so different to that to which 
 he had been accustomed, and of whose language he 
 had but an imperfect knowledge, it was natural that 
 he should have sought the society of those of his 
 compatriots who were living there in exile like himself. 
 
36 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 It was in this way that he came to know a number 
 of French ladies of noble blood whose fortunes had 
 been lost in the Kevolution, and who lived, for the 
 sake of economy and for greater facility in the 
 exchange of social and spiritual sympathy, in a kind 
 of religious community. These good people intro- 
 duced him to their director, the Abbe Carron, who 
 obtained, almost immediately, an unbounded influ- 
 ence over him. As a result of this, and also perhaps 
 through an awakening of antipathy to his Protestant 
 surroundings, easily understood in his impressionable 
 temperament, Feli de la Mennais became much more 
 thorough in his Catholicism than he had been when 
 living in the midst of his own people. There are 
 signs in his correspondence of an ardent apostolic 
 zeal which led him to praiseworthy, though not 
 always very practical, attempts to convert to the 
 true faith members of the heretical population in the 
 midst of which he found himself. In September 
 1815 he wrote to the Abbe Jean to tell him that he 
 had met in the house he was staying at a boy of 
 thirteen who had taken a fancy to him, and whose 
 parents had consented to his becoming a Catholic, 
 provided that the trouble and expense of educating 
 him was taken off their hands : — 
 
 I have given them no answer [he continues], but I have 
 spoken to M. Carron, who says that though one should neg- 
 lect nothing where the saving of a soul is concerned, never- 
 theless such a burden would weigh very heavily on us. . . . 
 In case you should think that the thing cannot be done with 
 prudence, please write to me and say that the political situa- 
 
A RESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATION Oi 
 
 tion in France and the uncertainty of your residence at 
 St. Brieuc do not permit you to take on yourself an engage- 
 ment of this nature. 
 
 Is it necessary to state that this idea was never 
 carried out ? Much more touching and more cha- 
 racteristic is his connection with Henry Moorman. 
 This young man became firmly attached to him, and 
 eventually was received into the Catholic Church. 
 His parents opposed the change, and tried to prevent 
 all intercourse with the young Frenchman. Moor- 
 man seems to have rather enjoyed the idea of a 
 clandestine correspondence. He wrote to Feli, tell- 
 ing him that several of his letters had been inter- 
 cepted, and suggesting that he should disguise his 
 handwriting. He even went so far as to hint that 
 he might imitate a female hand on the envelope, and 
 impress a pretty name on the seal. We can imagine 
 the indignation of the young apostle, and the vehe- 
 mence of his reply. This episode, however, did not 
 end their friendship, and we are glad to hear that 
 when Henry died, a few years afterwards, De la Men- 
 nais received a touching letter of sympathy from his 
 father, showing that all, if not forgotten, was at least 
 forgiven. 
 
 But to return to the Abbe Carron. 
 
 It will be remembered that Feli had received 
 minor orders in 1809, and that this step had been 
 preceded by a painful attack of gloomy and mystical 
 despondency which had prevented his going any 
 further. After that event he had settled down to his 
 work, and this for the time had saved him, though 
 
38 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 some of his letters still bore traces of a morbid 
 brooding over the worldly past. At the period we 
 have reached another crisis was approaching. In 
 April 1814 he had written to the Abbe Jean : ' I need 
 someone who can direct me, who can strengthen me, 
 who can support me ; someone who understands me, 
 and to whom I can say absolutely everything. On 
 this, perhaps, depends my salvation.' 
 
 And in London he had met such a guide. On 
 August 10, 1815, his brother wrote to M. Querret : 
 ' I heard a short time ago from Robertson ; he 
 began, in the middle of July, a retreat, after which 
 M. Carron had promised to decide on the course he 
 ought to pursue ; I pray God with all my heart that 
 he may enlighten them both, but I am glad that I 
 have nothing to do with the decision.' His director 
 as well as his friends in France pressed him to take 
 the irrevocable step, and yet Feli seems to have 
 hesitated. A final and decisive conflict was raging 
 in his perplexed and already wearied soul. Most of 
 those whom he respected advised him to go on, but 
 his brother stood by silent, while he himself drew 
 back, and became more and more timid as the time 
 for actual decision drew near. And it is this which 
 gives a vividly pathetic interest to his correspondence 
 at this date, and to some valuable letters brought to 
 light by M. Alfred Eoussel. 
 
 There is a piece of news which is long in coming [wrote 
 
 the Abbe Teysseyre to the two brothers : the date of this 
 
 . letter is unknown, but it must have been written while Feli was 
 
 Btill in France], and it is that the youngest of you, walking 
 
A RESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATION 39 
 
 in the glorious footsteps of his elder brother, has contracted 
 those sweet and holy obligations which will bind him irre- 
 vocably to his Saviour and the Church. ... If some diffi- 
 culty still stands in the way of the generous longing of his 
 heart, let him come to us [to St. Sulpice]. . . . Yes, let him 
 come, and we will prepare for him chains of love, but so 
 beautiful, so light, so glorious, that they themselves must 
 make him feel the liberty, the peace, and the joy of the 
 children of God and of the ministers of the Lord. One of 
 our fervent seminarists told us the other day that he had 
 spent part of his time of meditation in wondering how one 
 could love in this life anything but God ; what would he 
 have thought if he had been told that a soul, singularly 
 favoured by God, had hesitated for so long to engage himself 
 in His service ? 
 
 Already in June 1812 he had written : ' llemem- 
 ber me to your brother. I am almost angry at your 
 not being able to tell me that he is a priest.' In the 
 previous year, 1811, there is a letter from Feli 
 himself to the Abbe Jean. Speaking of a friend of 
 theirs, he says : — 
 
 This peace of mind moves - me deeply, I can hardly 
 understand it ; not that I cannot conceive that it may be 
 possible, by faith, to put oneself above the pains of the 
 body . . . but the wounds of the soul, the secret agony of a 
 sick heart, in which the softest feelings are embittered, and 
 which has no strength but to torment itself, these are 
 incompatible with the tranquillity we admire, and leave no 
 hope but in the eternal peace of the tomb. Unable to work, 
 I have suffered much in these last two days. When I think 
 of this increasing disposition to a barren and gloomy melan- 
 choly, the future frightens me ; and it matters not which 
 way I turn my eyes, the horizon threatens me ; dark, heavy 
 clouds break off from time to time, and lay waste everything 
 that stands in their way ; for me there can no more be any 
 
40 THE ABBE BE LAMENNAIS 
 
 season but the season of storms. However, God is always 
 a Father, even when He strikes. 
 
 And now a 'storm had burst upon him. The Abbe 
 Brute, the intimate friend of the brothers, was on his 
 way to America, where he was to devote himself to 
 a missionary life. He had gone off without seeing 
 Feli, and he was still oppressed with the painful 
 memories of leave-taking, and by the thought that 
 perhaps he might never return, when he wrote from 
 on board ship, November 12, 1815 : — ' Feli, Feli— has 
 he come back ? Is he, will he soon be a priest ? Does 
 he still hesitate ? Could it be possible ? Has our 
 sweet Jesus too many friends, too many priests in 
 these times ? ' Was it possible to resist such pres- 
 sure ? By nature he was sympathetic and impres- 
 sionable, and he only desired someone whom he could 
 respect, whom he could lean upon, who could decide 
 for him. His friends were unanimous in trying to 
 induce him to take the irrevocable step, while the Abbe 
 Jean alone was silent, and even he, perhaps, was 
 hoping in secret for the decision which the others 
 invoked in words. He did not resist. He returned 
 to France in November 1815, and he was ordained 
 subdeacon in 1816. Upon this, his brother, who 
 had hitherto held aloof, now that the doors of the 
 world had finally closed behind him, took the wisest 
 course and cordially joined in leading him on. Thus, 
 on January 4, 1810, he wrote to M. Querret, announ- 
 cing the fact, and he added : — 
 
 "Who could have said, last March, that he was going to 
 England only to come upon the man whom God destined to 
 
A RESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATION 41 
 
 lead him to the foot of the altar, and to bring him to a de- 
 termination from which he had seemed for some time to be 
 getting every day further and further away? Oh, Provi- 
 dence, this is one of Thy miracles ! . . . How goes it with 
 your political state of mind ? Is it bright? Mine is black, 
 black as ebony. Feli's is darker still. 
 
 In March Teysseyre wrote to. Jean : — 
 Living in obedience, in spite of his natural bent, and 
 without consolation, he has been drawn to this step as a 
 victim. He has all the merits of love, but he has tasted 
 none of its sweetness. ... It is this which has led me to 
 entertain his idea- of joining the Jesuits at Rome. ... If 
 such a resolution had come from himself, if I had had any 
 ground for supposing that his imagination had had the least 
 part in it ... I should have bt?en in doubt about it. But, 
 on the contrary, he had ceased to think of it for some time, 
 and it is M. Carron who has re-awakened the idea in his 
 mind. 
 
 It will be remembered that when he had been 
 suffering from an attack of melancholy in 1807, Feli 
 had hinted at a desire for solitude. He then thought 
 of the Trappists. He had now come to the more 
 practical idea of joining the Jesuits, who had just 
 been restored, and who were tolerated in France, in 
 spite of the laws against religious orders. Fortu- 
 nately, this project was not carried out. He was 
 ordained on March 9, 181G, A short time previously 
 he had written to his sister, Madame Blaize : — ' I cer- 
 tainly have not followed my own inclination in de- 
 ciding on an ecclesiastical career. But we must try 
 to make the best of this short life. What we give 
 to God is little enough ; nothing, in fact, and the 
 reward is infinite.' 
 
42 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 The Abbe* Carron had tried to console him. In 
 February he had written : — ' I think, my dear friend, 
 that it is not wise to ask God for crosses, and that 
 we should limit ourselves to demanding the love of 
 suffering, leaving it to Him to expose us to what He 
 considers not to be beyond our strength. . . . But 
 why, my Feli, this melancholy ? Is not the life of a 
 good Christian passed, as it were, in continual festi- 
 vity ? Does not the very thought of God give us 
 joy?' 
 
 After the ordination matters do not seem to have 
 improved. i The only thing,' he wrote, ' which re- 
 mains for me to do, is to make myself as comfortable 
 as possible, and to try to go to sleep at the foot of 
 the post to which they have fastened my chain.' 
 
 Utterly sick at heart, he tried to find comfort by 
 going to live in Paris, with the Abbe Carron and his 
 flock, who had returned to France. It is to this fact 
 that we owe some painful letters from Teysseyre to 
 the Abbe Jean. Here is an extract from one of 
 them : — 
 
 I hasten, my dear friend, to set your mind at ease about 
 your brother, who, I believe, has written you a letter more cal- 
 culated to break your heart than to console it. He is going 
 through a severe crisis, temptations of every kind. He is, like 
 the prophet, hanging by a single thread over the abyss of 
 despair. . . . He pushes his obedience so far as to say Mass 
 nearly every day, in spite of the horror which he seems to 
 have of the priesthood; and we are doing everything to 
 occupy and divert his mind. . . . Write to him kindly, and 
 encourage him to work with me at a great work on Indiffer- 
 ence, the translation of the famous manuscript of Leibniz. 
 
A RESTLESS YOUTH. ORDINATION 43 
 
 Speak to him, as from yourself, of a little project we have 
 formed ... of a society of young men trained for the de- 
 fence of religion. He is saved if we can occupy and divert 
 him, without leaving him time to breathe or to dwell on his 
 own thoughts. . . . Enter as little as possible with him 
 into discussion on the priesthood— a few words only, full of 
 tenderness. . . . 
 
 Shortly before the final consummation, but when 
 
 the"" choice was no longer open, this same M. 
 
 Teysseyre had written to Feli : — 
 
 Alas ! poor imperfect mortals, we said our first Mass 
 on Mount Tabor ; to you it' will be given to say yours on 
 Calvary. Your soul, perhaps, will be as the soul of Jesus 
 in His agony, sad unto death. Abandoned in appearance 
 by God and man, you will be tempted to cry . out, in 
 plaintive longing, as did our Lord : '• J thirst ' — ' My God, 
 why hast Thou forsaken Me 1 ' 
 
 And this first Mass ? As in the case of the ordi- 
 nation, no detailed account of it has come down to 
 us, but one fact has remained which is not without 
 its significance, for he himself became our authority 
 for it when he afterwards declared that, as he held 
 the newly consecrated Host in his trembling hands, 
 he heard distinctly a voice which said to him : ' I 
 call on you to carry my cross, nothing but the cross. 
 . . . Eemember ! ' 
 
44 THE A IS BE DE LANENNAIS 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 THE ESSAY ON INDIFEEBENCE 
 
 The Abbe de Lamennais, 1 for so we must now call 
 him, was not a man to allow himself to remain for 
 long in a state of helpless and inactive despondency. 
 Though there may possibly seem to be a vein of grim 
 irony in the statement, it yet remains true that he 
 was known among the Feuillantines, as the flock of 
 M. Carron were called, as 'le jovial Mennais.' This 
 may be accounted for partly by a very natural desire 
 to hide from himself and others the gloomy state of 
 his feelings in his ordinary every-day intercourse 
 with those amongst whom he lived, and to reserve 
 those painful outpourings from his inmost soul to 
 more intimate moments of conversation with his 
 closest friends, with those who had advised him to 
 take the step, and who could therefore sympathise 
 with him. But it may also be explained by the fact 
 which has come down to us through one of his 
 earliest biographers, that his moods, though extreme 
 in their intensity, were of short duration. This 
 writer, quoted by M. Eoussel, tells us that l one day, 
 when he had cruelly and unreasonably scolded a 
 servant, he begged the poor terrified girl's pardon, 
 
 1 Shortly after the period at which we have now arrived, he adopted 
 this form of his name in signing his letters. 
 
THE ESSAY ON INDIFFERENCE 45 
 
 and added : " What would you have ! You know I 
 sometimes lose control over myself, and if I had not 
 got into a furious passion, I should have fainted." ' 
 In any case he seems to have settled down gradually 
 to his normal occupations and to have reconciled 
 himself by degrees to his new position. As before, 
 he found refuge in his work, and In preparing for the 
 contests which had inevitably to arise in the peculiar 
 circumstances of the Restoration. 
 
 In the case of Napoleon, his opposition had been 
 fundamental. He had hated the Emperor as being 
 an impersonation of the Ee volution. This could not 
 be said of the monarchy, for he was an ardent 
 Royalist, and believed that the only safety for France 
 was in its being governed by a legitimate ruler. His 
 opposition, therefore, was now directed, not against 
 the theory, but against the practical working of the 
 new Government, against the compromises with the 
 previous regime which were forced upon it by the 
 necessities of the case. Thus, so early as March 
 1815, before his departure for London, he wrote 
 to a friend, criticising the educational legislation of 
 the ministry. ' Have you seen,' he wrote, ' this 
 beautiful ordinance, drawn up by the Protestant 
 Guizot, and signed by the most Christian king ? 
 Nothing is wanting in it but religion.' And also to 
 his brother at about the same date : ' Cursed be the 
 daughter and the mother, the old and the new Uni- 
 versity ! Cursed be the fabricators of this infernal 
 intrusion ! Cursed be those who have given it birth, 
 or who shall contribute to the developing of it ! 
 
46 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 Cursed be the superiors, cursed be the subordinates, 
 cursed be the whole of the infamous rabble ! ' After 
 Waterloo the Abbe Jean wrote to Querret : ' I 
 no longer fear the man from the Isle of Elba ; he is 
 played out . . . but who would not tremble at seeing, 
 on the one hand, the feebleness of those who govern, 
 and, on the other, the extreme corruption of the 
 governed ? . . . The Jacobins are beginning, unblush- 
 ingly, to raise their heads.' 
 
 On August 10, 1815, F£li wrote to him from 
 London : — 
 
 Great God, what times we live in ! I foresee calamities, 
 revolutions, and interminable wars. The infamous conduct 
 of the allies is not calculated to inspire hopefulness in any- 
 one who can see a little beyond the present. They are 
 working, as if of set purpose, to dethrone the monarch 
 whom they have brought back to us on their bloody 
 bayonets. That man can no longer be viewed by the 
 nation in any other light than as the instrument or the 
 pretext of its disgrace and of its misfortunes. The title 
 deed of his restoration has been signed in French blood, by 
 the light from the burning of our towns and villages. Only 
 a foreign army can keep him upon his throne ; and if that 
 army remains in France, if this organised plundering con- 
 tinues, in a word, if they treat us as Bonaparte treated 
 Spain, we have but dne example to follow, that of the 
 Spaniards ; for no misfortune can happen to a people 
 which is not preferable to loss of honour and of indepen- 
 dence. On the other hand, supposing that nothing of this 
 kind come about, that the enemy retires, that internal peace 
 is restored, and that power is consolidated in the feeble 
 hands in which it has been placed, what can we reasonably 
 hope for from an administration, wild, uncertain, drunk 
 with all the principles which have tormented society for the 
 
THE ESSAY ON INDIFFERENCE 47 
 
 last twenty-five years ; from a king who is good, but who is 
 so blind as to misunderstand both men and things, to place 
 his person under the protection of murderers, and the State 
 under the safeguard of institutions which France, for any ' 
 good they have brought it, owes to the reign of Terror or to j 
 that of Napoleon. Certainly, one need not be either aj 
 prophet or the son of a prophet to foresee the results of such 
 inconceivable madness. And who would not be frightened 
 at these demagogic ravings, which seem suddenly to have 
 seized a part of the nation, men, women, children, in- 
 fatuated worshippers of their own frightful and laughable 
 sovereignty? For myself, whichever way I look, I see 
 things which make me tremble and shudder. The whole j 
 human race seems to be rushing to its destruction ; it is in 
 its death agony, and, like a wounded man, it staggers and j 
 rolls over in its own blood. 
 
 It was in no very friendly frame of mind, then, 
 that the Abbe de Lamennais looked around him when 
 he came to Paris and settled down, in M. Carron's 
 house, to work and to observe. In religion, as in 
 other departments of life, the old landmarks had 
 disappeared. A scientific and synthetic spirit had 
 slowly undermined the analytic and deductive 
 methods which had at one time held undisputed 
 sway. Bacon had finally triumphed over the school- 
 men, while the once brilliant star of Descartes had 
 paled before the rising sun of Diderot and the 
 Encyclopaedists. And the new point of view had, 
 in a few superior minds, produced its enthusiasms 
 and even its martyrs. Lavoisier had asked for a 
 short respite from the guillotine for the purpose 
 of concluding an experiment ; and Condorcet had 
 spent those last awful moments when, under sen- 
 
48 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 tence of death, he ■ was probably meditating suicide, 
 in consigning to paper some calmly philosophic 
 thoughts on the social phenomena which were the 
 cause of his own misfortune. But with the mass of 
 the people this state of things had meant simply a 
 loss of ideal and the growth of a vaguely synthetic 
 instinct which had to be appealed to in dealing with 
 the highest questions. Chateaubriand had recognised 
 this when he turned for support to the aesthetic 
 sense, and Bonald when he based himself on the 
 traditions of mankind, while De Maistre had already 
 shown signs of that immense constructive faculty 
 which was to make his name immortal. On the 
 other hand, the needs of a period of transition had 
 been entirely misunderstood by the great genius ' 
 who, at a critical moment, held in his hand the 
 destinies of the most progressive country in Europe. 
 Indeed, it may be said, without exaggeration, that to 
 the Concordat of 1801 is to be chiefly attributed the un- 
 healthy spirit which has reigned iii France ever since. 
 This policy of Napoleon was inherited by the 
 Bestoration, and it is hardly necessary to say that 
 the idea of a State Church, which had seemed almost 
 respectable as part of a scheme for a world empire, 
 became contemptible when it reduced religion and its / 
 ministers to the position of mere salaried agents of a 
 monarchy which owed its very existence to the inter- 
 vention of foreign powers. Thus it happened that 
 when men were longing for a doctrine which might 
 appeal to the highest instincts, which might offer 
 itself as a solution of the problems that had now 
 
THE ESSAY ON INDIFFERENCE 49 
 
 become of surpassing interest, a venerable institution 
 was forced to present itself to them as a miserable 
 caricature of its own glorious past. Can it be 
 wondered at that they smiled when they were told 
 that the Catholic religion was the religion of the 
 great majority of Frenchmen, and that they looked 
 on the existence of a creed in their legal formularies 
 principally as an excuse for having none of their own ? 
 Superficial statesmen, it is true, saw in the general 
 apathy only a reason for congratulating themselves 
 on the absence of that fanaticism which had so often 
 appeared in history with baneful results ; but those 
 who were gifted with a deeper insight into the 
 meaning of- things recognised in 'it a dangerous 
 disease which, unless it were checked in time, would 
 undermine the moral fibre of the nation. At other 
 times, and notably during the Revolution, there had 
 been much difference of opinion in religious matters ; 
 but then men had been sincere, and where they had 
 ceased to believe they had begun to hate. This may 
 have been unpleasant, but at least it was healthy. 
 In the first years of the Restoration there was no 
 bitterness against religion, and the guillotine was 
 replaced by a shrug of the shoulders. The Terror 
 had tried to suppress thought, and had but added 
 strength to it by concentration ; the Empire and the 
 early Restoration endowed it, and, as a result, it 
 became tame, and almost died of inertia. Men spent 
 their days in work and their evenings in pleasure, and 
 did not bother themselves about questions to which 
 they could only hope for an official solution. History 
 
 E 
 
50 THE ABBE BE LAMENNAIS 
 
 and the sciences were taught, under careful super- 
 vision, in the State University, while theology was 
 clothed in the worn-out formulae of Gallican orthodoxy 
 by the salaried ministers of the State Church, and the 
 precepts of religion were frigidly mumbled to sparse 
 and apathetic congregations, in buildings set aside 
 for that purpose by the Government. 
 
 And yet, as has been suggested, there were not 
 wanting in that society the germs of a healthier 
 state of things. The point of view, it is true, had 
 changed, and the old metaphysical methods, even 
 could they have been pursued freely, would have met 
 with no response in an age which had become 
 thoroughly scientific and synthetical in its ways of 
 thought. What was wanted was a teacher who? 
 could point out the fact that religion, as a social] 
 factot, could no more be ignored in dealing with) 
 society than the law of gravity in the domain of] 
 physics or of astronomy, and who, strictly adhering 
 to this principle, could show the way to a doctrine] 
 without which it was impossible for the religious 
 instinct to express itself. 
 
 In the first years of the Eestoration it did not 
 seem likely that such a teacher would arise. The 
 majority of the clergy willingly bowed their heads to 
 the yoke imposed upon them by a legitimate monarch, 
 while the lucrative posts offered by the University'' 
 silenced opposition on the part of candidates for 
 promotion in a more purely intellectual sphere. 
 This, with the apathy of the educated laity, gave the 
 Government every reason to hope that their policy 
 
THE ESSAY ON INDIFFERENCE 51 
 
 had been successful, and that their dominion in 
 
 every department would be peacefully recognised, 
 
 \ when suddenly, in 1818, two works were given to the 
 
 | world, and these were followed in . 1819 by a third. 
 
 i They went, each in its way, to the heart of the 
 
 question. 
 
 Appearing thus almost simultaneously, the effect 
 of these works in disturbing the ominous quiet of the 
 religious atmosphere was considerable. They were 
 entitled : Essai historique sur les libertes de VEglise 
 Gallicane ; Essai sur VJndiffdrence en matte" re de 
 religion, and Du Pape. The first was a defence 
 of that system of State Churches which the ministry 
 were endeavouring to establish; it was written by 
 Gregoire, the former constitutional bishop of Blois,. 
 and, as it made a liberal and republican State a 
 necessary condition for the successful working of 
 the theological principle it advocated, it came into 
 the controversy as a powerful blow to the monarchy 
 from the side on which an attack was least expected. 
 The last was the great masterpiece of De Maistre, in 
 which he laid down with deep philosophic insight a 
 (complete basis for that ultramontane theory which 
 was so much dreaded by those in power. But the 
 second was by a comparatively unknown author, and 
 it revealed to the world the fact that a new and 
 dangerous champion had appeared in the Catholic 
 camp. 
 
 In April 1817 the Abbe de Lamennais had written 
 io his brother about a book he was engaged on-: 
 ' You will form an opinion on it when you see it. 
 
52 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 Many a time I have felt inclined to give the whole 
 thing up, and should have done so had not Teysseyre 
 persuaded me to go on. In any case I do not deceive 
 myself about what I am doing, but it is something to 
 be able to think that Providence may cause a bad 
 book to produce some useful results.' 
 
 And again, on November 30, ' I cannot work at 
 my second volume. Often I feel a kind of regret at 
 having done the first. If it were still unwritten, I 
 should not begin it.' 
 
 The cause of these anxious misgivings was the 
 Essai sur V Indifference, which placed its author at 
 once in the first rank of contemporary writers. 
 Coming, as it did, in the midst of the prevailing secu- 
 rity, this first volume read like a withering satire on 
 the utter rottenness of society. Its scope and its 
 object are suggested in the opening paragraph : — 
 
 The century which is most hopelessly diseased is notf 
 that which is passionate in error, but rather that which; 
 neglects, which disdains truth. There is still vitality, and ! 
 consequently hope, where violence is seen ; but, when all ^" 
 movement has ceased, when the pulse no longer beats, when 
 the heart has become cold, can we fail to recognise the signs 
 of approaching dissolution ? 
 
 Then follows a ruthless criticism of the state of 
 things in France : — 
 
 Convinced [says the writer in one passage], convinced 
 in spite of itself, of the necessity of connecting earth with 
 heaven and man with his Creator, the statecraft of tQ-day 
 enters the sanctuary and brings forth from it the Supreme 
 Being who is adored there. It clothes Him in rags of purple, 
 puts a reed into His hand, on His head a crown of thorns, 
 
THE ESSAY ON INDIFFERENCE 53 
 
 and it shows Him to the people, saying : ' Behold your God ! ' 
 Can it be wondered at that religion, thus humiliated and 
 dishonoured, is received with indifference ? After eighteen 
 hundred years of fighting and of triumphs, Christianity at 
 length meets with the same fate as its Founder. Summoned', 
 so to speak, to appear, not before a proconsul, but before the 
 human race, the question is put to it : Art thou a king ? Is 
 it true, as these accuse thee, that thou pretendest to rule 
 ' over us ? Then comes the answer : It is you who have said 
 it ; I am a king. I reign over minds by enlightening them, 
 and over hearts by guiding their movements, and even their 
 very desires ; I reign over society by the good that I have 
 done. The world was buried in the darkness of error, I 
 came to bring truth to it ; hence my mission : he who loves 
 the truth hears me. But this saying has already ceased to 
 have a meaning to perverted reason ; if must be explained 
 to it. What is truth? asks the stupid, absent-minded judge ; 
 and, without waiting for an answer, he goes out, declares 
 that he finds no fault in the accused, and, washing his hands, 
 gives religion over to the multitude to become, first their 
 plaything and then their victim. 
 
 There is a vein of deep sarcasm in such a passage 
 as the following : — 
 
 Among the pagans there was not a temple which had 
 not its sacred revenues, not a divinity whom its adorers had 
 not made independent by endowing his altars ; but the God 
 of the Christians, hardly admitted to a temporary salary, 
 figures every year in an insulting budget as a pensioner of 
 the State. . . . Statecraft may smile complacently at the 
 sublime outcome of its maxims ; it may congratulate itself 
 on the peace which it has succeeded in establishing between 
 hostile religions ; this does not excite our wonder, but our 
 tears. Peace, profound peace, reigned also over those dis- 
 mal plains where Germanicus found, in mournful proximity, 
 the bones of the Germans and of the soldiers of Varus. 
 
54 the abbe" de lamennais 
 
 Defining indifference, as 'the extinction of all* 
 feeling of love or hatred in the heart, through the ; 
 absence of any judgment or belief in the mind,' the s 
 author subjects it to a severe analysis, classifies it in 
 all its manifestations, pitilessly drags it forth and 
 holds it up to ridicule in all the hideous absurdity 
 of its manifold expressions. He sets forth, for in- 
 stance, the proposition that religion may be lool<etV\ 
 upon as a mere political institution, necessary only to j 
 the people, and, devoting two chapters to a merciless 
 drawing out of all its consequences, he says, amongst 
 other things : — 
 
 I appeal to experience : what is it that has introduced 
 irreligion to our cottages ? Eeasoning ? No, but example ; the^f 
 fear of appearing credulous. . . . And certainly philosophy 
 is strangely confident, if it seriously hopes to divide the 
 human race into two classes, one of which is to believe for 
 the security of the other, and is to receive in payment nothing 
 but sarcasm ; of which one is to recognise no duty but in- 
 clination, while the other is to renounce its inclinations for 
 duties which are recognised to be chimerical ; of which one 
 is to laugh at what the other is complacently to respect ; so 
 that, on one side is to be found, with independence, every- 
 thing which man hopes for in this world ; and on the other, 
 with slavery to prejudice, all that he fears and hates, and 
 this with ridicule as a reward. What a happy, what a pro- 
 foundly judicious arrangement ! 
 
 Turning then to writers who, in one form or 
 another, had advocated indifference, his heaviest 
 blows are reserved for J. J. llousseau and the profes- 
 sion of faith of the Savoyard vicar. ' If [after exam- 
 ining into the foundations of things] we go wrong,' 
 had said the author of ' Emile,' ' we shall have de- 
 
THE ESSAY ON INDIFFERENCE 55 
 
 prived ourselves of a great excuse before the tribunal 
 of the Sovereign Judge. Will He not rather pardon 
 the error in which we were brought up than that 
 which we dared to choose for ourselves ? ' And to 
 this comes the pithy answer : — 
 
 A son, they say, can never be wrong in following the 
 religion of his father. Thus, in religion, birth decides 
 everything. In one country it is your duty to be a 
 polytheist, in another to adore only one God. . . . Christian 
 in Europe, Mussulman in Persia, idolater by the Congo, 
 you will offer on the banks of the Ganges divine honours 
 to Vishnu, Your father, Who was a little credulous, wor- 
 shipped a stone, or an onion. Keep up this touching domestic 
 devotion, for a ' son can never be wrong,' &c. 
 
 Thus passage after passage is cited, and proposi- 
 tion is confronted with proposition, from this master- 
 piece of the Genevan writer, till the impression is 
 produced on the reader that he is witnessing the 
 dissection of a body, beautiful in form, but saturated 
 with some fetid poison or habitual paradox, which, 
 when stirred, causes all else to be lost in its own 
 \ foulness. And yet, curiously enough, there is soine- 
 ') thing in the style and method of the Abbe de Lamen- 
 ' nais which forcibly suggests the influence over him 
 of the author of 'Emile.' There are whole pages 
 which might have found their place in that work, while 
 ; certain passages almost make us forget that we are 
 i not dealing with the eighteenth century writer. Per- 
 ' haps even the very bitterness of the attack is but an 
 evidence of a secret liking. 
 
 As we approach the concluding arguments of this 
 volume, the shadows become deepened, and dark, 
 
50 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 threatening clouds begin to gather on the horizon. 
 It is useless, contends the writer, for monarchy to 
 think that it can strengthen itself by sacrificing the 
 highest interests to the Eevolution. A terrible ex- 
 ample of a similar policy and its results were but 
 recently given to the world. 
 
 Then, on the ruins of the altar and the throne, over 
 the bones of priest and sovereign, began the reign of force, 
 the reign of hatred and of terror ; a frightful fulfilment of 
 the prophecy : ' A whole people will hurl itself, man against 
 man, neighbour against neighbour, and, with a great tumult, 
 the child will rise against the old man, the populace against 
 those in power ; for they have opposed their language and 
 their inventions to God.' To describe that terrible scene 
 of disorder, of crime, of dissolution, and of slaughter, that 
 orgy of doctrines, that confused clashing of interests and 
 of passions, that mingling of proscription with impure 
 feasts, those cries of blasphemy, those sinister songs, that 
 low, persistent knocking of the hammer of destruction, of 
 the axe striking its victims, those horrible detonations and 
 those roars of joy, dismal echo from a vast massacre, those 
 widowed cities, those rivers fouled with dead bodies, those 
 temples, those towns in ashes, murder and lust, tears and 
 blood— one would have to borrow its tongue from hell, as 
 some monsters have borrowed its furies. 
 
 Then, further on, is a significant note of warn- 
 ing :— 
 
 What is power in society if not the right to command, 
 which presupposes the duty of obeying. But he who 
 commands is higher than he who obeys, so much so that 
 it is impossible to imagine a greater superiority ; for it 
 does not imply a mere difference in nature. An angel, by 
 his nature, is higher than man ; yet man, strictly speaking, 
 owes nothing to an angel. If an angel were to clothe 
 
THE ESSAV ON INDIFFERENCE 57 
 
 himself in flesh and to appear on the earth, why should 
 I obey him ? I can see, on the one hand, no right, and on 
 the other, no duty. Every created being is, by nature, 
 independent of every other, and if the highest of celestial 
 spirits were to come of his own accord, and with no 
 sanction but his will, to dictate laws to man, and to acquire 
 dominion over him, I should see in him but a tyrant, and 
 in his subjects only slaves. What," then, are we to think 
 when a man arrogates to himself sovereignty over his 
 fellow men, his equals in right, and often his superiors in 
 intellect, in enlightenment, and in virtue ? Is it possible to 
 conceive a more iniquitous, a more insolent usurpation, or 
 a more degrading servitude? Certainly, I do not hesitate 
 to say with Rousseau : ' It is only after prolonged per- 
 version of feeling and of ideas that it becomes possible for 
 a man to recognise a master in one like' to himself.' 
 
 And finally, as a conclusion. to the whole argument, 
 ' Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth to men 
 l of good will. . . . But, to those whose will is so per- 
 verted that they refuse to listen to the divine word, 
 to love infinite goodness, to obey immutable order — 
 war, eternal war.' . . . 
 
 I leave it to my readers to imagine the effect pro- 
 duced by a work of which the Gallican Frayssinous 
 said : ' This book would awaken the dead.' But, 
 there is an incident connected with its publication 
 which is not without a humorous interest. It will be 
 remembered that Grogoire's work, which appeared 
 almost simultaneously with it, though equally dis- 
 concerting to the Government, was opposed to it in 
 fundamental principle, advocating, as it did, Galli- 
 canism, with the establishment of a republic as a 
 necessary condition. On February 10, 1818, the 
 
58 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 Abbe de Lamennais wrote to hi3 brother Jean : ' I am 
 getting them to send you fifteen copies of the Essay, 
 together with Gregoire.' This note was followed on 
 the 13th by another : ' Through a misunderstanding, 
 which is very disagreeable to me, they have forwarded 
 to you fifteen copies of Gregoire' s Essai instead of 
 mine. This will mean the loss of at least a hundred 
 francs.' And then we breathe again, for we are told, ', 
 in a letter of the 15th of the same month : ' Happily 
 the Gr^goires had not been sent off, and the bookseller 
 has kindly consented to take them back.' 
 
 On the other hand, this year of triumph was also 
 a year of sadness, for it witnessed the death of the 
 Abb6 Teysseyre (who had watched over him and 
 encouraged him in his work), of his younger brother 
 Gratien, and of Henry Moorman. After a short stay 
 with the Abbe Jean at St. Brieuc, he retired to La 
 Chenaie, with the intention of occupying his mind in 
 dealing with the immense problems which had been 
 raised in his first volume. He had already demon- 
 strated the necessity of religion as a social factor, 
 and the absurdity of the prevailing indifference, but 
 a more difficult task still lay before him. It was 
 necessary to discover a criterion of truth, or rather of 
 selection, by which it might become possible for men 
 to choose something ultimate and real amongst the 
 thousand competing doctrines which had appeared 
 in the course of the long evolution of the religious 
 instinct in man. He thoroughly realised that the old 
 metaphysical methods were worn out, not only as 
 actual proofs of the existence of a God, but as pro- 
 
THE ESSAY ON INDIFFERENCE 59 
 
 cesses of thought which would win for themselves 
 serious consideration, in an age which was entirely 
 given over to physical science. The traditional first 
 principles of what was called Catholic philosophy 
 were no longer accepted outside the circle of theolo- 
 gical disputations, or, if ever they were dragged forth 
 into the world, they served only to demonstrate the 
 futility of the system "which was based on them, and 
 often to shatter the faith of the hapless believer who 
 was officially informed that everything depended on 
 them. On February 1, 1820, Feli de Lamennais wrote 
 from La Chenaie to the Abbe Jean : — 
 
 I have received from Turin 'a curions letter, written by a 
 person who does not give his name. Having been brought 
 up a Christian, he began to read the apologists for religion, 
 with the idea that it would strengthen his faith. As a result 
 he no longer knows what to believe. He says, and he is 
 right, that he must begin by proving, not that there is 
 a God, but that he himself exists. 
 
 In 1818 he had written to the Abbe BruW : — 
 
 I shall work out a new system of defence for Christianity 
 - against infidels and heretics, a very simple system, in which 
 j the proofs will be so rigorous that unless one is prepared to 
 i give up the right of saying I am, it will be necessary to say 
 \Credo to the very end. 
 
 In this spirit, then, he set to work, and as a result 
 he brought out, between 1820 and 1823, the remain- 
 ing volumes of the ' Essai sur l'lndifference.' 
 
 In the opening chapter the author sets himself, 
 in a few terse and pithy arguments, to demolish the 
 cobwebs of philosophic dogmatism which still lingered 
 
60 
 
 THE ABBE BE LAMENNAIS 
 
 in the schools. The process of deduction may be 
 absolutely conclusive. Our logic may be faultless, 
 but it 
 
 is without a basis ; it rests on gratuitous hypotheses, and its 
 value is measured by theirs; for whence do we conclude 
 that there is any necessary relation between truth and 
 certain operations of the mind? . . . When, therefore, 
 Descartes, wishing to escape from his systematic doubt, 
 establishes the proposition : ' I think ; therefore I am,' he 
 crosses an immense gulf, and lays in the midst of nothing 
 the foundation stone of the edifice which he undertakes 
 to build. 
 
 And in another passage : — 
 
 How is it that people will not recognise that nothing 
 could be demonstrated without the help of truths already 
 certain ? This being admitted, it is contradictory to pretend 
 to demonstrate a first truth ; and, consequently, far from 
 certitude resting on demonstration, no demonstration would 
 be possible without an anterior certitude, on which its validity 
 absolutely depends. Thus dogmatists begin by assuming that 
 they are already in possession of what they are in search of. 
 . . . Kecognising this contradiction, many of them admit 
 the necessity of presupposing what they call first principles. 
 ... If you ask them what constitutes a first principle, 
 they answer : What every one believes invincibly. But the 
 madman is absolutely convinced of the error which charac- 
 terises his madness. Individual conviction, then, is not 
 sufficient for discerning truth from error, or for ascertain- 
 ing first principles. . . . Must we plunge, then, into the 
 silent depths of universal scepticism? . . . Nature does 
 not permit it. . . . Whether man wills it or not, he must 
 believe, because he must act, because he must fulfil the law 
 of self-preservation. If he were to listen only to his indi- 
 vidual reason, he would learn only to doubt of everything, 
 even of himself ; it would reduce him to a condition of 
 
THE ESSAY ON INDIFFERENCE 61 
 
 absolute inaction; he would perish before he succeeded 
 in proving his own existence. 
 
 How, then, are we to escape from this difficulty ? 
 Let us examine human nature from a non-meta- 
 physical point of view. 
 
 There is a series of truths which is formed in our under- 
 standing in spite of ourselves, and <3f which it is impossible 
 to doubt ; they come to us either through our senses or 
 through some other channel. Such are all truths necessary 
 to our preservation, all those on which is based the ordinary 
 intercourse of life, the practice of the arts and the pursuit of 
 indispensable callings. . -. . Why is it that we do not 
 question a multitude of truths which science has established? 
 It is because we are absolutely incapable of doing so, or 
 because we- know that, if we were to doubt them, we should 
 be declared mad, ignorant, or stupid by other men ; and 
 this constitutes human certitude. Common consent, seiisus 
 commun is, is for us the seal of truth ; there is no other. . . . 
 Every created being who dares to say I am, gives utter- 
 ance, not to a judgment, bat to his faith in an impenetrable 
 mystery, and does but stammer, without understanding it, 
 the first article of the symbol of intelligences. 
 
 If, then, we are to arrive at a conclusion in 
 religious matters, we must make use of those methods 
 which have been proved successful in other things. 
 Astronomy and biology have been examined in the 
 sequence of their phenomena, and they have yielded 
 up their secrets ; so now society must be studied in 
 all its manifestations. Wandering among the ruins 
 of the historic past, searching amid the traditions of 
 mankind, we shall be answered by the voice of 
 humanity, as we have been answered by space and 
 time by the planets and by the phenomena of life. 
 
62 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 Following up this thought, the Abbe de Lamennais 
 invites us to descend with him into the arena of 
 history. 
 
 It would be impossible in the space at my 
 disposal to give any adequate idea of the real weight 
 of this powerful work, for its strength depends on 
 the mass of evidence with which the writer endeavours 
 to crush opposition. No doubt there are inaccura- 
 cies : he depended on the knowledge of his time ; but 
 these are lost in the vast accumulation of facts 
 which overwhelm the hapless objector, and compel 
 him to admit that, convicted in his isolation, he stands 
 condemned before the tribunal of the human race. 
 
 ' Ask Cicero,' says the author in one place — 
 
 whether the soul is immortal, and he answers that by 
 his reason alone he ' can form only conjectures. What is 
 most likely ? That is the great question.' But presently, 
 raising his eyes and looking over the whole world, his 
 doubts disappear, and he boldly gives utterance to these 
 words, which will be repeated through all time : ' Basing 
 ourselves on the agreement of all nations, we believe that 
 souls are immortal ; for the unanimous consent of the peoples 
 ought to be looked upon in all things as a law of nature.' 
 
 And again, speaking of truth : — 
 
 We shall not seek it in the isolated mind of man, but in 
 the reason of society. We shall examine the beliefs, the 
 traditions of the human race, we shall note down its 
 decisions; and if any objector presents himself, we shall 
 \ point out to him two roads, one of which he must follow: 
 the dark, solitary way of private judgment, which ends in 
 nothing, and the social way of authority, which leads to life 
 or even to God, and we shall say to him as our only answer : 
 Choose. 
 
THE ESSAY ON INDIFFERENCE 63 
 
 Then, seizing the objector, and holding him fast 
 by the fascination of boldness and of erudition, he 
 compels him to stand and look while he unrolls 
 before him the history of human thought and aspira- 
 tion, only desisting when he has completely driven 
 home the proposition that Christianity began with 
 the world. 
 
 One after another the root doctrines of the 
 Catholic religion are shown to have existed, in one 
 form or another, in all the mythologies which have 
 appeared in the course of the evolution of man. The 
 gods and heroes were worshipped, but they were 
 intermediary beings, and the idea of a Supreme God 
 never entirely disappeared. So, in Homer, we find 
 (1) that there is one Supreme God who is called 
 {passim) the father and the sovereign master of gods 
 and men, the architect of the ivorld, the prince and 
 governor of the universe, the first God and the great 
 God, ; (2) that all nature is peopled with subordinate 
 intelligences, who are the' ministers of the supreme 
 Divinity. ... So also in the beautiful hymn of 
 Cleanthes : — 
 
 Hail, glorious King of the immortals, adored under dif- 
 ferent names, eternally all powerful, author of Nature, who 
 governest the world by thy laws! It is permitted to mortals 
 to invoke thee, for we are thy children, thy image, and as a 
 feeble echo of thy voice, we who live but for a moment and 
 who crawl on the earth. I will ever praise thee, always 
 will I sing of thy power. The whole universe obeys thee. 
 . . . Thy invincible hands are armed with the thunder- 
 bolt; it falls, and Nature trembles. Thou guidest the 
 common reason, thou penetratest and makest to germinate 
 
64 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 everything that is. Great King, nothing is done without 
 thee, neither on the earth, nor in the heavens, nor in the deep 
 sea, except evil, which is the work of foolish mortals. Bringing 
 into agreement contrary principles, denning the limits of 
 each, and fusing happiness and misfortune, thou maintainest 
 harmony ; of so many different parts thou formest a single 
 whole, ruled by constant order, which mad, sinful men 
 trouble by their blind desire. . . . Author of all good, 
 father of men, deliver them from this baneful ignorance, 
 dissipate the mists which cloud their souls, give them to 
 know the wisdom by which thou governest the world, that 
 we may honour thee worthily. . . . For no act is greater 
 for man or for the gods than the celebration, in justice, of 
 universal law. (3rd century B.C.) 
 
 And in another place he quotes from Eemusat 
 a translated passage from the writings of the Chinese 
 philosopher Lao-tseu : — 
 
 He whom you look at and whom you cannot see is called 
 J; be whom you listen to and cannot hear is called Hi ; he 
 whom you seek with your hand but cannot touch is 
 called Wei. These three beings are incomprehensible, and 
 together they make but one. The highest is not more 
 brilliant, the lowest is not more obscure. It is a chain 
 without interruption, and which cannot be named. 
 
 He then continues : — 
 
 M. Eemusat observes on this passage, that the three 
 characters which form the words I, Hi, Wei have no sense ; 
 that they are simply signs of sounds foreign to the Chinese 
 language, whether pronounced as a whole or only in their 
 initials I, H, V, which the Chinese cannot isolate in writing ; 
 and he demonstrates that the name I-Hi-Wei, or I H V, 
 is identical with the name Jehovah. . . . 
 
 In fine, searching among the traditions of all the 
 nations, the harmony is broken by no dissentient 
 
THE ESSAY ON INDIFFERENCE 65 
 
 voice. Teotl among the Mexicans, Pacha-Camac with 
 the Peruvians, Oxmuzd in Persia : the Creator of the 
 universe was worshipped by the Irish as Kean 
 Kroithi, and by the ancient Britons as Hu, surnaraed 
 Gadarn, the powerful. Whichever way we turn we are 
 met by the same result, and there is no escaping 
 from the conclusion unless we would isolate our- 
 selves from the human race. 'It is enough,' he 
 says, when he' has caused his reader's brain to throb 
 with the vast accumulation of evidence which is 
 scattered up and down the pages of this work : — 
 
 What need have we of further witnesses ? Even if all 
 the generations, rising from their dust, were to come to us 
 of themselves and to say, ' This was our belief,' could we 
 have greater certainty that the knowledge of a God, one, 
 eternal, Father of all that is, was never absent from the 
 world? It is the universal faith, the faith of all the cen- 
 turies and of all the nations. What astounding unanimity ! 
 What wonderful harmony ! It is imposing, this voice 
 which rises from every corner of the earth and of time 
 towards the God of eternity. 
 
 Apart, in the shadow, another voice, a sinister voice, has 
 been heard ; it seemed to come from a sepulchre, and to 
 have broken itself amongst the bones ; it was as the voice 
 of the dead. The peoples have listened to the dismal sound ; 
 low murmured blasphemies have reached them ; they have 
 said, ' It is the cry of the atheist,' and they have shuddered. 
 
 To these traditions, which deal with fundamental 
 things, may be added all those which tell us of the 
 canonisation of saints, of heroes, of ancestors ; the 
 consecration of life in the choice of a profession, as 
 in the case of the monk, the priest, or the young 
 warrior; the sanctity of the marriage tie, in one form. 
 
 F 
 
66 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 or another, in all but the most degraded ; the con- 
 sciousness of sin and the practice of baptism. On 
 this last the author says : — 
 
 The idea that we are born impure and sinful was, from 
 the highest antiquity, so profoundly impressed on the minds 
 of men, that there existed, in every people, expiatory rites 
 to purify the child on its entry into life. Usually this cere- 
 mony took place when a name was given to it. With the 
 Romans the day was the ninth for boys, and the eighth for 
 girls. It was called lustricus on account of the lustral water 
 which was used for the purification of the new born. The 
 Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks had a similar custom. 
 At Yucatan the child was brought to the temple, where the 
 priest poured on its head the water which was set apart for 
 this, and gave him a name. In the Canaries this function 
 was fulfilled by women instead of priests. 
 
 Then comes a quotation from Humboldt on 
 
 Mexico : — 
 
 The midwife, calling on the god Ometeuctli and the god- 
 dess Omecihuatl, who live in the dwelling of the blessed, 
 poured water on the forehead and breast of the new born ; 
 after having pronounced different prayers, in which the 
 water was described as the symbol of the purification of the 
 soul, the midwife called up some children, who had been 
 invited to give a name to the new born. In some provinces 
 they now brought fire and pretended to pass the child 
 through the flame, as if to purify it by tire as well as by 
 water. This ceremony recalls customs whose origin, in 
 Asia, is lost in the highest antiquity. Not less curious is a 
 custom found among the Hindoos. The name is written 
 on the child's forehead, and after having plunged it three 
 times into the water of a river, the Brahmin cries, in a loud 
 voice, ' Oh God, pure, one, invisible, eternal and perfect ! 
 We offer thee this child, issue of a holy tribe, anointed with 
 an incorruptible oil and purified with water ! ' 
 
THE ESSAY ON INDIFFERENCE 67 
 
 And so the argument continues. No corner is 
 left unsearched, no stone is left unturned which may 
 yield up to the observer some choice treasure of his- 
 toric or traditional antiquity. Turning, for instance, 
 to the practice of praying for the dead, he triumph- 
 antly demonstrates that at no period in the religious 
 evolution of man has this been other than a funda- 
 mental principle, and that never, at any time since 
 the beginning of the known world, has there been a ■ 
 nation or a tribe which could not say with the deepest 
 conviction, ' It is a holy and wholesome thought to 
 pray for the dead.' 
 
 But when the Abb6 de Lamejmais has led his 
 readers through the traditions and beliefs of every 
 branch of the human family, when he has demon 
 strated to them the universality of every distinctive 
 doctrine and of every practice in the Catholic re- 
 ligion, from the existence of God to the veneration 
 of relics, he is confronted by, the main difficulty of 
 his undertaking. 
 
 These beliefs and practices may have existed 
 amongst all the peoples from the highest antiquity, 
 and many of them may have been practically uni- 
 versal, but each of them had, in different parts of the 
 world, been incorporated in a body of doctrine which 
 may be described as national and local. Many of the 
 peoples had so exaggerated the purely human side of 
 religion, the honour due to great men, to gods and 
 heroes, as to obscure the central principle, the idea 
 which should have given unity to the whole; in 
 fact, they had become idolaters, and, as a result, a 
 
68 THE ABBE BE LAMENNAIS 
 
 considerable amount of moral anarchy had been in- 
 troduced through the want of any adequate idea of 
 goodness and badness in the gods selected for public 
 and private worship. On the other hand, a nation 
 like the Jews, while holding strictly in the long run 
 to the principle of unity, had allowed the softening 
 and humanising elements in religion to fall into the 
 background, thus permitting a cruel and ultra- 
 national spirit to grow up amongst them, and this 
 almost destroyed the social efficacy of religion — at 
 least from a broadly human point of view. Add to 
 this the fact that most of the Asiatic religions were 
 utterly clouded in an unpractical and other-worldly 
 mysticism, and it becomes extremely difficult to 
 extract from the tangled mass of human traditions 
 a doctrine which may be dignified by the name of 
 religion, and which may have a social efficacy. It 
 might be possible for the learned, for the critical, by 
 setting aside all that is local, all that seems to be 
 inconsistent with the general tendencies of religious 
 evolution, to construct for themselves a system more 
 or less suited to their individual wants ; but a religion 
 so formed could have no social value, the continuity 
 with the past would be broken, and ordinary men 
 would see in it only one more curious product of the 
 ever restless human brain. 
 
 Feeling this difficulty, the author of the Essai 
 refers us back to the principle from which he started. 
 It is not good for a I man to be alone had been the 
 constant theme of his early chapters, and he reminds 
 his readers that this principle, too, has always been 
 
THE ESSAY OX INDIFFERENCE 69 
 
 recognised as fundamental in the history of the human 
 race. In all the old mythologies and cosmogonies 
 the working out of their position as religions was 
 based on the fact that, as it is impossible for a man 
 to live alone or to act alone, so it is impossible for 
 him to tliinli alone. ' They say,' says the author of 
 14-mile, ' that Socrates invented morality. Others 
 before him had put it into practice : he only put into 
 words what they had done ; he simply turned their 
 examples into precepts. Aristides had been just 
 before Socrates had explained what justice was ; 
 Leonidas had died for his country ere Socrates pro- 
 claimed patriotism as a duty*' 
 
 At no time did religion depend for its sanction on 
 the individual reason ; its real force always lay in a 
 kind of social instinct which made it easier for a man 
 to believe than to disbelieve. Every nation, every 
 tribe, had its gods or its ideas about God, while there 
 was no family which had not its tutelary divinities, 
 and to doubt of or to criticise these would have been 
 to undermine the very foundations of society. But 
 when those foundations had been weakened by other 
 causes, when the growth of commerce, the develop- 
 ment of conquest, and the increase of international 
 intercourse —fead— done their work— when men had 
 become thoroughly alive to the fact that there were 
 other gods_iind other systems than their own, there 
 arose the sophists, the critics, the philosophers, and 
 in the most enlightened countries the ancestral 
 constructions slowly crumbled away. For how was 
 it possible to hold to antique ideals and principles, 
 
70 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 however venerable, when others had been discovered 
 equally well attested and systematised out of all 
 possibility of general unity by their too purely 
 national development ? Great statesmen, Eoman em- 
 perors, tried to solve the difficulty by the creation 
 of a world empire, and at its centre there began 
 to form itself a kind of international pantheon, 
 where devotees from every nation might find gratifi- 
 cation for their own particular spiritual needs. But, 
 setting aside the fact that such an idea was glaringly 
 irrational and could only impose on the most ignorant, 
 the whole imperial system was ephemeral, and, in 
 reality, represented a greater principle which was 
 germinating in the mind of man. And that greater 
 principle found its fulfilment in Christianity. Men 
 turned their thoughts vaguely, tentatively, to a uni- 
 versal society, which might sum up within itself 
 those traditions which had been handed down from 
 all antiquity, but which now seemed likely to perish ; 
 and, when things seemed most hopeless, they dis- 
 covered that such a society was already in their 
 midst. For Christianity from its earliest beginnings 
 was founded on this principle of universality. ' My 
 kingdom is not of this world.' ' Many shall come 
 from the east and from the west,' etc., etc. And it ap- 
 pealed to the traditions of the human race. Christ 
 himself constantly referred the Jews to their sacred 
 writings, and His example was followed by the 
 apostles in dealing with the peoples to whom they 
 preached the gospel. In fact no one could say with 
 greater truth than a Christian : Homo sum, humani 
 nihil a me alienum puto. 
 
THE ESSAY ON INDIFFERENCE 71 
 
 But this state of things did not come about at 
 once, it took time to draw out the virtue that was 
 hidden in the new religion. ' Did anyone believe,' 
 says the author, ' that Christianity had always been 
 what it is to-day, the thing he believed in would 
 not be Christianity.' Beginning among the Jews, 
 and having for its first exponents members of the 
 chosen race, it was but natural that its earliest 
 colouring should have been almost exclusively 
 Jewish. But as the field of its operation was 
 widened, as it spread itself abroad over the pagan 
 and heathen world, it gradually absorbed, by a 
 system of comparison and selection, all that was 
 durable in. the civilisations with which it came into 
 contact. And so it has gone on ever since ; so it 
 will continue to the end of time. Every newly dis- 
 covered civilisation, every newly converted people, 
 every forward step in the older nations of the 
 Christian world leads to some fresh development — 
 some further adaptation to the needs of place and 
 time. Thus all the various streams of tradition, 
 many of them lost in the impenetrable mists of pre- 
 historic antiquity, find their way sooner or later to 
 the Catholic Church. Christianity is not a book, 
 still less is it a system of metaphysics ; but about 
 those problems which, if left unsolved, must eternally 
 torment mankind, it tells its adherents just enough to 
 save them from that terrible disease of anarchic and 
 therefore futile speculation which dissipates those 
 energies that might be so usefully employed in other 
 spheres. It demands of the individual a sacrifice, 
 but this sacrifice differs in nothing from those 
 
72 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 which he recognises as necessary in other things. 
 He must constantly refer back to Ms only possible 
 criterion, the universal consent of mankind, the dic- 
 tates of which are summed up and formulated by the 
 Catholic Church, and this in its turn is the ultimate 
 expression of human society, not that it has reached 
 its full development — that cannot be till the end of 
 time ; but outside this organisation there can be no 
 evolution, and any apparent growth must be ephe- 
 meral, and must lead to mental anarchy and conse- 
 quently to social inaction. 
 
 For man [says the author of the Essai] cannot live in 
 isolation ; try to conceive him freed from all dependence, 
 and you will conceive a mere negation. Outside nothingness 
 all things are linked together, and there is nothing which 
 does not lean for support on something else. Minds, like 
 bodies, have no life but that which they receive on condition 
 that they share it. Not a being but owes itself to other 
 beings, for it is indebted to them for everything that it is. 
 
 And, in another place : — 
 
 The mind, the heart, even the senses, or the body, in a 
 word, the whole man, naturally desires to perpetuate himself, 
 for it is in his nature to wish to live, and it is not in his 
 power to wish anything else. 
 
 In the state of unnatural isolation in which philosophy 
 places him, all his efforts at self-preservation tend to destroy 
 him. In himself, man produces nothing ; life is the gift of 
 the Sovereign Being — creatures transmit it, and that is all. 
 Now, to transmit is to communicate what one has received. 
 To receive and to give up, it is in this that life consists, and 
 by this means it is preserved. This being so, there can 
 be no life outside of society, and society considered in its 
 intellectual aspect, is essentially composed of three persons — 
 
THE ESSAY ON INDIFFERENCE 73 
 
 the first, who receives ; the second, from whom he receives ; 
 and the third, to whom he transmits what he has received. 
 
 Everything in man which has a special mode of life, the 
 mind, the heart, the senses, or the body, is subject to this 
 universal law of union and dependence. 
 
 What happens when a man is alone ? 
 
 The mind wishes to live, to fulfil the law of self-preser- 
 vation ; to live for it is to know or to possess truth. When 
 it receives it, it is passive ; when it communicates or trans- 
 mits it, it is active ; but, in either state, it must be united to 
 another mind which acts on it, or on which it acts. Being ■ 
 unable, when alone, to receive or to transmit, and yet wishing 
 to live, it tries to multiply itself or to create in itself the 
 social persons necessary to the preserving and to the per- 
 petuation of its life : a vain attempt, a sterile effort in a 
 mind which, seeking to fertilise' itself, hopes to bring forth 
 without having conceived. This kind of depravation, this 
 loathsome vice of the intelligence, weakens it, wears it out, 
 and leads to a curious sort of idiocy called ideologic 
 
 Thus, whichever way we turn we are driven to 
 the same conclusion. Man cannot live alone, the law 
 of self-preservation compels him to seek expression 
 for himself in society ; but the only possible society 
 in religious matters is the Catholic Church. Con- 
 sequently . . . 
 
 Such, in its general outlines is the argument of 
 this powerful book. Its importance may be estimated 
 by the fact that, not so long afterwards, its methods 
 were pursued from a wider standpoint, and its con- 
 clusions more fully drawn out by the great genius who 
 gave to the world the system which culminated in 
 the Religion of Humanity. But we must be careful 
 of exaggeration. The only science with which the 
 
74 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 Abbe"de Lamennais was thoroughly conversant was 
 mathematics, of which he had, before his ordination, 
 been professor at St. Malo. As a consequence of this, 
 he lays too much stress on tradition, and not enough 
 on tendency, on evolution. This tradition, for him, 
 is an absolute criterion of truth in its plain state- 
 ments, and not in the underlying truths which have 
 to be developed in due course by the progress of the 
 human mind, by the increase of experience, and by 
 the demands of a growing organism. He recognised 
 the necessity of evolution, but the process did not 
 carry him much further than the gathering up and 
 systematising of fully formed doctrines already ex- 
 isting in the world. He had no knowledge of the 
 embryological fact that ' every function is successively 
 executed by two {sometimes more) organs ; of which 
 one is primitive, transitory, provisional ; the others, 
 secondary, definitive, permanent." And this further 
 one : ' That . . . the embryo of the higher animals 
 successively reneios its organs and its characteristics 
 through a series of metamorphoses which give it per- 
 manent conditions, not only different, but even directly 
 contrary to those ivhich it had primitively.'' In con- 
 sequence of this, his treatment of society as an 
 organism is veiy defective, and it is here that the 
 founder of Positivism is immeasurably his superior. 
 It is only when we bear in mind the time of its 
 appearance, and the antecedents of its author, that 
 we can estimate the real greatness of the ' Essai sur 
 l'lndifference en matiere de Iteligion.' 
 
 Inspired by his genius, Lamennais had become 
 
THE ESSAY ON INDIFFERENCE 75 
 
 conscious of the fact that the knowledge which under- 
 lies religion cannot be essentially different from that 
 which forms the basis of any science. But he had 
 not realised the full import of his discovery. Like 
 his predecessors and contemporaries, he strove 
 after the absolute, thus vitiating the argument in 
 which he sought to correct their obvious errors. We 
 shall see how time and experience led him to alter 
 his opinion. 
 
76 TIIE ABBE DE LAMExNNATS 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE AUTHOR GOES TO ROME 
 
 I:? is not to be wondered at that so bold an attack on 
 the traditional methods should have raised a storm in 
 the theological world. It Was generally considered, 
 amongst the older clergy, that the author had under- 
 mined the only possible basis of religion ; that, in his 
 criticism of individual reason, he had destroyed that 
 very authority whose prerogatives he had wished to 
 defend. Thus, in August 1820, Frayssinous wrote 
 to him : ' I am sure you will not mind my telling 
 you of the impression your second volume seems to 
 have made on the clergy in general. They are 
 unanimous on the strength and talent of the writer ; 
 but they are frightened at the new philosophy it con- 
 tains ; they fear that you may, on the one hand, have 
 weakened the ordinary motives of credibility, and, on 
 the other, exaggerated the scope of authority.' In 
 October he received a letter from his old friend and 
 adviser the Abbe Carron, who told him that the 
 authorities at St. Sulpice criticised the book, as under- 
 mining the foundations of human certitude ; he also 
 suggested that he would have done well to consult 
 some one more experienced than himself before enter- 
 ing on so dangerous a subject. This may be looked 
 
THE AUTHOR GOES TO ROME 77 
 
 upon as a last warning from the venerable priest, who 
 died soon afterwards. The answer, which is dated 
 November 1, 1820, is characteristic : — 
 
 I thank you a thousand times, my dear Father, for your 
 pious and tender letter. You need not fear that I shall ever 
 be hurt by your criticisms and by your advice. I understand 
 the feeling which inspires them, and they can but increase 
 my affection for you. Coming to the matter itself, I think I 
 did everything which prudence demanded of me, in showing 
 my work to some whom I thought, and whom I still think, 
 the most capable of judging it. Here the clergy, with some 
 exceptions, approve of it. . ■ . . At first I received nothing but 
 objections ; now justifications are being sent to me from every 
 side. It is clear to me that my adversaries do not understand 
 me. . . . If the principles for ithich I" contend are rejected, 
 I cannot conceive of any sound method for the defence of 
 religion, nor any decisive answer to the unbelievers of our 
 time. . . . But I know, and I admit, without hesitation, that 
 I may be wrong ; and that is why (this in the strictest con- 
 fidence) I have sent a petition to Rome to have my book 
 examined. My request has been received with kindness. . . . 
 I can say with the deepest sincerity, that I have not been 
 more moved by the criticisms than by the praises which have 
 been heaped upon me. . . . All this noise does not reach my 
 soul, so you need not pity me. My tranquillity has not been 
 disturbed for a moment by these clamourings. I will even 
 go farther : if the judgment of Borne is favourable to me, I 
 shall rejoice for religion's sake ; if it goes against me, I shall 
 be glad for my own. I have decided in that case to torite no 
 more, and I shall be the happiest of men ; for I shall be able 
 conscientiously to enjoy that rest which, in my opinion, is the 
 only good thing in this world. . . . Pray for your poor son. 
 
 Feli de Lamennais did not know himself. To him 
 rest was never possible, driven as he was by that inner ' 
 force which throughout his life compelled him to work 
 
78 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 and act, whether he would or no. But this letter is 
 interesting from another point of view. It reveals to 
 us a very legitimate confidence in himself, which was 
 natural, and in fact necessary, in a writer who had 
 undertaken to think out a system of defence for reli- 
 gion, and this, I think, is combined with all that 
 could be demanded in humility and submissiveness 
 to lawful authority ; yet curiously enough, Mon- 
 seigneur Kicard, in his interesting and deeply critical 
 volume on the founder of the Mennaisian School, 
 seizing on the two passages which I have placed in 
 italics, remarks : ' Thus then, on the one hand, never 
 before his time has religion been solidly defended, and, 
 on the other, if Eome does not agree with him, he will 
 not retract, he will break his pen.' On the first point 
 I would answer that the sentence following . the first 
 italicised passage would in itself be a decisive refuta- 
 tion of this interpretation of the writer's meaning, 
 even were it unsupported by protests like the following, 
 which is taken from the ' Defense de l'Essai. sur 
 l'lndiff^rence ' : ' " Why," they say, " do you seek for 
 new proofs of religion ? Why are you not content 
 with the old ones ? " Why ? Because new objections 
 have been brought — because the position of men's 
 minds is no longer the same. . . .' The second 
 point I leave to the judgment of my readers. 
 
 But Lamennais was mistaken in thinking that 
 he was proof against the clamours of the world, 
 however much he might affect to despise them. His 
 was one of those impressionable natures which 
 require sympathy, and he was deeply wounded by 
 
THE AUTHOR GOES TO ROME 79 
 
 many things which were said in the course of the 
 controversy. There seems to be evidence of this in 
 a letter published by M. Koussel. The recipient, the 
 Abb6 Hay, was an old friend of his and of the Abbs' 
 Jean : ' M. l'Abbe, your principles in matters of 
 religion, of conscience, and of honour differ so essen- 
 tially from mine, that it is my duty to inform you 
 that there can no longer be anything in common 
 between us. F. de Lamennais.' This was written 
 in March 1824. 
 
 On the other hand he derived comfort from the 
 adherence of his brother, who described the new 
 system as our philosophy, and from that of the great 
 mass of the young clergy, which convinced him that 
 the future was with the doctrine of the Essai. Then 
 again, in a letter dated August 1823, to his friend 
 the Abbe Eohrbacher, he mentions a fact which 
 must have been very reassuring to him : ' I have 
 received, from the most distinguished men of learn- 
 ing, expressions of the liveliest satisfaction at the 
 part of my work which especially interests them. 
 The light which has already been thrown on things 
 by the study of traditions seems to promise a new 
 kind of triumph for religion. The mass of material 
 furnished by India and China is enormous. We are 
 at the beginning of a great epoch.' 
 
 Thus the name of Lamennais was in every 
 mouth, and his position was assured in the foremost 
 rank of contemporary writers. A portrait of him 
 was circulated, and it found its way to an old friend. 
 The Abbe Brute wrote, probably in 1824 : 
 
80 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 I have just returned from a visit to M. Bouillon. The 
 sight of Feli's portrait ... I did not recognise it — well 
 done, you say, from every point of view. ... I thought of 
 our sixteen years of separation. How time works ! That face, 
 now so decided, was so childish, so weakly, so good ; here 
 it is all genius, I think. I have been singularly disappointed, 
 to have come twice without seeing him — and I. saw you so 
 easily — to go away thus, perhaps for a last separation. I 
 was like a child, and in passing by the Luxembourg I felt 
 tears coming into my eyes. 
 
 M. Eoussel thinks that this curious letter was 
 written to the Abbe" Jean. 
 
 Late in the spring of 1824, the author of the 
 Essai went to Switzerland to recruit. Neither the 
 climate nor the scenery seems to have agreed with 
 him, for he wrote in May from Geneva to Mdlle. de 
 Luciniere, one of the Feuillantines : — 
 
 I hate above all things the town from which I write. 
 Everything here gets on my nerves, and I would rather a 
 hundred times live among the Turks than in the midst of 
 this abominable population. The rest of Switzerland is 
 hardly better. I doubt whether there is in the world any 
 country where one could get more bored. As to natural 
 curiosities, mountains, valleys, lakes, torrents, waterfalls, 
 these are things which do not take long to see, and which 
 then have no further charm. I put it to you, is not a 
 pointed rock with a little snow on the top a wonderful 
 thing? I must say I prefer my fire-wood. And besides, 
 the climate is very severe. We have had winter weather 
 almost constantly since I left home. As I do not know 
 bow many months I shall have to wait before the season 
 changes, I think it will be safer to go to seek summer in 
 Italy, to imitate Hannibal in crossing the Alps. I shall do 
 so towards the end of the month. 
 
THE AUTHOR GOES TO ROME 81 
 
 He kept his word, and the summer of this year 
 found him in the Eternal City. The Pope, Leo XII., 
 received him kindly. The doofcrine of the Essai had 
 already been examined by three Eoman theologians, 
 and had been formally approved by the Master of 
 the Sacred Palace. Lamennais. was now admitted 
 to a private audience, and the report went round 
 that as he came into the room he noticed that it had 
 for its only ornaments a crucifix, a picture of the 
 Madonna, and his own portrait. 1 Everywhere he 
 was received as befitted the greatest defender of the 
 faith in modern times. On July 13 he wrote to 
 Mdlle. de Luciniere : — 
 
 I do not yet know how long I shall remain here. My 
 reception could not have been better, and they are pressing 
 me to stay longer than I originally intended. ... I have 
 seen the Holy Father twice, and ho has treated me with 
 great kindness. Just now he is in good health, and I thank 
 God for it. . . . We must pray for him, for he is a good and 
 worthy Pope, besides being a man of very great merit. . . . 
 The heat here is stifling. ... I may mention that Italian 
 cooking is detestable from our French point of view. I feel 
 the want of some good soup, a respectable piece of boiled 
 beef, and a good roast joint. An edifying wish, is it not, 
 from the capital of the Christian world. 
 
 In the same letter he mentions ' M. Wiseman, a 
 young English ecclesiastic,' by whom indeed it was 
 to be delivered at its destination. Lamennais had 
 now reached the age of forty-two, while the future 
 cardinal was still in his twenties, so that there can- 
 
 1 It appears, from a letter written at the time of the death of Leo XII., 
 that he did not learn till that occasion that the Pope's room was thus 
 decorated. 
 
 G 
 
82 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 not have been much in common between the two 
 men ; nevertheless this chance acquaintance seems 
 to have ripened into a closer friendship, and it is to 
 this that we owe an interesting description of the 
 French writer which may be fittingly inserted here. 
 It is to be found in the Becollections of the Four last 
 Popes. 
 
 How he did so mightily prevail on others it is hard to 
 say. He was truly in look and presence almost contemp- 
 tible : small, weakly, without pride of countenance or mastery 
 of eye, without any external grace ; his tongue seemed to 
 be the organ by which, unaided, he gave marvellous utter- 
 ance to thoughts clear, deep, and strong. Several times 
 have I held long conversations with him at various intervals, 
 and he was always the same. With his head hung down, 
 his hands clasped before him, or gently moving in one 
 another, he poured out, in answer to a question, a stream of 
 thought. . . . He at once seized the whole subject, divided 
 it into its heads, as symmetrically as Flechier or Massillon ; 
 then took them one by one, enunciated each, and drew his 
 conclusions. All this went on in a monotonous but soft 
 tone, and was so unbroken, so unhesitating, and yet so 
 polished and elegant, that if you had closed your eyes, you 
 might easily have fancied you were listening to the reading 
 of a finished and elaborately corrected volume. 
 
 Then everything was illustrated by happy imagery, so 
 apt, so graphic, and so complete. I remember his once de- 
 scribing, in glowing colours, the future prospects of the 
 Church. He had referred to prophecies of Scripture and 
 fulfilments in history, and had concluded that, not even at 
 the period of Constantine, has perfect accomplishment of 
 predictions and types been made ; and that, therefore, a more 
 glorious phase yet awaited the Church than any she had 
 yet experienced, and this, he thought, could not be far off. 
 ' And how,' I asked, ' do you think, or see that this great 
 
THE AUTHOR GOES TO ROME 83- 
 
 and wonderful change in her condition will be brought 
 about ? ' 
 
 ' I cannot see,' he replied ; ' I feel myself like a man placed 
 at one end of a long gallery, at the other extremity of which 
 are brilliant lights shedding their rays on objects there. I 
 see paintings and sculpture, furniture and persons, clear and 
 distinct, but of what is between me and them I see nothing ; 
 the whole interval is dark, and I cannot describe what 
 occupies the space.' . . . 
 
 On another occasion his answer was more explicit. He 
 had been discoursing eloquently on England, and what had 
 to be done there in our religious struggles. He had de- 
 scribed the way in which prejudices had to be overcome, 
 and public opinion won over. He was asked — 
 
 ' But what, or where, are the instruments with which such 
 great and difficult things have to be wrought ? ' 
 
 ' They do not exist as yet,' he answered. ' You must 
 begin by making the implements with which your work has 
 to be performed ; it is what we are doing in France.' 
 
 But we must return to the Abbe Jean. 
 
 While his younger brother in these brilliant be- 
 ginnings was convincing himself and the world of the 
 genius that was in him, this exemplary priest, quietly 
 and unobtrusively, had been labouring at St. Brieuc 
 for the salvation of souls. For some years, during 
 an interregnum, the entire responsibility for the man- 
 agement of the diocese had rested on his shoulders. 
 In fulfilling the arduous duties of his position he had 
 realised the necessity of mutual help, of organisation 
 with a view to social action, and he had founded, be- 
 sides innumerable confraternities of children, the 
 Daughters of Providence (a teaching order of women) 
 and the Brother* of Christian Instruction. This last, 
 
 a 2 
 
84 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 which was his greatest and most enduring work, was 
 afterwards destined to immortalise his name in. 
 every part of the Catholic world. In 1819 Mgr. de 
 la Komagere had been installed as bishop of St. 
 Brieuc, and he had appointed the Abbe Jean de 
 Lamennais his vicar-general, but the pronounced 
 Gallicanism of the bishop and the extreme Ultramon- 
 tanism of the priest had made it impossible for the 
 latter to hold his post for long, and he had resigned, 
 notwithstanding the entreaties of the venerable pre- 
 late. In 1822 he had accepted the office of vicar- 
 general to the Prince de Croy, Grand Almoner of 
 France, Archbishop of Rouen, and had come to Paris, 
 where he was with difficulty persuaded to change 
 his old snuff-stained cassock for a new one, more 
 suited to the atmosphere of the Court. He performed 
 the functions of this office, which practically involved 
 the nomination of bishops to the French Sees, till its 
 abolition in 1824. Had he chosen, he might then 
 have been raised to the episcopal dignity, but we are 
 told that he ' energetically refused seventeen offers,' 
 so wholly had he given himself up to the development 
 of the work of his Congregation of Brothers. 
 
 When Feli returned from Rome in the autumn 
 of 1824, Jean was still in residence at the Grand 
 Almonry, and he very naturally offered him a room 
 on his way through Paris. But the author of the 
 Essai sur V Indifference, and of divers articles in 
 the independent papers, was not in good odour with 
 the Court, and the Prince de Croy wrote to his friend 
 M. de Senfft to ask him to hint to Lamennais that 
 
THE AUTHOR GOES TO ROME 85 
 
 he would do well to leave. The effect of such a 
 communication on the irritable abbe is easier to 
 imagine than to describe. 
 
 He wrote at once to the archbishop, apologising 
 for his imprudence, and he added : — ' Three weeks 
 ago the Sovereign Pontiff begged me earnestly to 
 accept a room at the Vatican. I thank you for 
 having made me realise so soon that there are 
 differences both in men and in countries.' 
 
 This incident, trivial though it may seem, was of 
 considerable importance in bringing home to him the 
 real meaning of the controversy which he had forced 
 upon the world. The opposition "to the doctrine of 
 common consent did not come so much from Catho- 
 licism itself as from particular phases in it. He had 
 been well received in Borne, while even in France 
 his opinions were rapidly making their way with the 
 younger clergy — that is to say, with all those who 
 could afford to look with equanimity on the under- 
 mining of the artificial arrangements on which the 
 welfare of religion was supposed to depend. The 
 danger was on the side of the official classes, lay and, 
 clerical, whose public position made it impossible for 
 them to appreciate, even had they dared to do so 
 openly, an independent or militant attitude. 
 
 Lamennais was not a Republican, still less was 
 he a Revolutionist. Witness a graphic passage in an 
 article for January 21, 1823: — 'A king, a scaffold, 
 hell revelling in blood, the earth in silence and in 
 terror ; heaven opening to receive the just and then 
 closing again: that is the 21st of January.' His 
 
86 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 ideal was a monarchy absolute in all matters of state, 
 but strictly subordinated to the spiritual power : an 
 important condition when we remember that, with 
 him, religion was the most perfect expression of the 
 voice of the peoples. Thus, he contemptuously 
 speaks of Louis XVIII. as ' a descendant of the 
 monarch whose soul gave utterance to this profound 
 saying : L'Etat, c'est moi ' (art. 1823). For he recog- 
 nised that the general corruption of the ancicn 
 regime had not spared even the most sacred things. 
 In 1822 he had said : ' The Eevolution was a fact ; it 
 was fully accomplished at the period which is gene- 
 rally assigned as its starting point. Men mistook 
 putrefaction for death, and perhaps that is why all 
 those who have attempted a restoration have thought 
 it sufficient to embalm the corpse.' Then what 
 could be more scathing than this description of the 
 typical government official or venal deputy ? ' He 
 modestly approaches the regulator of his legislative 
 reason, leans over and whispers into his ear, then 
 pricks up his own so as to take in, without losing 
 anything, the answer to this profound and delicate 
 question : " Monseigneur, what is true to-day ! " ' 
 
 By his Eoyalist friends, by those who saw in the 
 monarchical principle the only true solution of social 
 difficulties, he was looked on chiefly as a staunch 
 defender of the good cause. Thus the Baron de 
 Vitrolles had written to him in 1822 : ' I love to see 
 you, in the midst of these agitations, performing the 
 great and noble task which you have imposed upon 
 yourself, the strengthening of that religious barrier 
 
THE AUTHOR GOES TO ROME 87 
 
 which should stand in the way of the new ideas.' 
 Up to a certain point, as my readers will see from 
 the passages to which I have alluded, this opinion 
 was justified. Legitimate monarchy seemed the 
 only means of escape from those frightful forms of 
 tyranny which Frenchmen had but too recently 
 experienced, and, with Lamennais, the distance 
 which separated an opinion from a conviction was 
 never very great. But, what these friends did not 
 realise in him, was the intensity of the religious 
 point of view. To men like Vitrolles, religion was 
 a barrier ; to the author of the Essai sur VIndif'6- 
 re nee it was everything. Hitherto he had dreamt of 
 an alliance between the two principles, but now, on 
 his return from Borne, a new idea began to germinate 
 in his mind. He was deeply impressed by the con- 
 trast between the serenity of the atmosphere in the 
 ■-©apital of the Christian world and the clashing of 
 sordid interests in the comparatively narrow arena of 
 French officialism. Thus the political ideal receded 
 further and further into the background, leaving the 
 other gradually to work its way towards complete 
 mastery over his mind. 
 
 Nor did those in power attempt in any way to 
 deal with this growing feeling of indifference, and 
 even of hatred, to the existing state of things. It 
 would be hard to find in the history of diplomacy 
 anything more thoroughly attested than the fact 
 that Leo XII. proposed to promote Lamennais to 
 the dignity of the cardinalate ; and it is asserted that 
 the proposition came to naught through the opposi- 
 
88 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 tion of the French Government. His letters during 
 the year 1825 show signs of a growing tendency to 
 cut himself adrift from things which he came to look 
 upon as of a purely ephemeral importance, and to 
 identify himself more and more with the one lasting 
 social organisation, the Catholic Church. Thus he 
 wrote in March 1825 to his friend the Marquis de 
 Coriolis : — 
 
 I do not believe that anyone has ever been more an 
 object of abuse and clamour than I have been for some time 
 past, and all because I said what I thought of two prelates 
 in influential positions who, for the greater glory of God 
 and the advantage of religion, had judged it expedient 
 publicly to make a semi-abjuration of Christianity. I feel 
 every day what I should have believed impossible— a 
 growing contempt for the men of our time. I should never 
 have thought that human nature could descend so low. . . . 
 It is in vain that I rack my memory ; I find nothing in it 
 which can compare in the smallest degree with the spectacle 
 offered by the Chamber of Deputies. This is certainly a 
 new thing in the world. Never has there been seen so 
 laughable a degradation or a corruption so stupid. I defy 
 posterity to believe the Moniteur of the year ; no possible 
 official character could make even probable such baseness, 
 such idiocy. Good God, whither are we going? What 
 shall we find when we get to the end of this ? ' 
 
 And, a month later, he adds : — 
 
 One is getting tired of this atmosphere, and, to borrow 
 an expression from the Bishop of Hermopolis, I am not one of 
 those who are the least bored by it ; I should like something 
 else just as well. But patience ; the something else will 
 come, and that only too soon. Everything is preparing for 
 a change of scene, and, for myself, I feel the approach of 
 the catastrophe of this terrible drama, when I hear a deputy, 
 
THE AUTHOR GOES TO ROME 89 
 
 an honest man . . . confiding to the Chamber that, after 
 having struggled for twenty years against the Revolution, he 
 will vote for a law which sanctions the most horrible crimes 
 of that Revolution. . . . Besides, everywhere there is un- 
 easiness, disgust, contempt, indignation. The general dis- 
 content is growing from day to day ; minds are becoming 
 embittered, brains are getting excited ; I foresee a storm in 
 the future. Oh ! I should be happy could I find, far from 
 Europe, in a peaceable country, a little solitude in a mild 
 climate . . . secure from the revolutions which menace the 
 world. 
 
 It is an interesting fact that this time of agitation 
 and uncertainty should have witnessed the pi'oduc- 
 tion of his greatest work of devotion ; indeed, he 
 afterwards, according to one account, considered it 
 the greatest of his writings. I have already spoken 
 of the Guide Spiritud, which was, in reality, an 
 edition of Blosius ; but besides this, the world owes 
 to the pen of the Abbe de Lamennais the Guide de 
 la Jeunesse, the Journee du. Chrdtien, and the Biblio- 
 tMque des Dames Ghreliennes. At the period we 
 have reached, he brought to a conclusion his trans- 
 lation of the immortal work of Thomas a Kempis, 
 and of this it is not too much to say that it was in 
 every respect worthy of the original. Many of my 
 readers, no doubt, will be familiar with every page, 
 with every line of this little book, but, for the benefit 
 of those who are not so fortunate, I shall here tran- 
 scribe a few passages taken at random from the 
 reflections added by the translator at the end of each 
 chapter : — 
 
 The world says to the ambitious : The desire for great- 
 
90 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 ness disturbs you, agitates you ; rise up, push yourself into 
 prominence. It says to the miser : Greed of gain devours 
 you ; save, heap up unceasingly. It says to the man of the 
 world, tormented with desire : Make yourself drunk with 
 all the pleasures. In fine, it says to every passion : Gratify 
 yourself, and you will have peace. A lying promise this ! 
 Care, sadness, anxiety, disgust, remorse, such is the peace 
 of the world. 
 
 Come up to this grave, look at these whitened disjointed 
 bones ; they are all that is left of a man whom perhaps you 
 knew, and who thought no more of death a few years ago 
 than you think of it to-day. In fact, had he not to busy 
 himself about his fortune . . . about the future of his 
 family. So he occupied himself with these things up to the 
 last. Well, come now, go into that house. Thoughtless 
 heirs are using the wealth which he had put together, and 
 they are trying to add to it, but there is no thought of the 
 dead. Yet something of him remains, and it is not in that 
 tomb. 
 
 If we must often suffer through our brother, so are we 
 not less a cause of suffering to him ; and that is why the 
 Apostle says : Bear ye one another's burdens. . . . But I hear 
 you say, there are things which are hard and difficult to 
 bear. Well, your merits will be the greater for it. It is for 
 this that grace is given to you, that you may be able to do 
 what would be impossible to nature alone. 
 
 You shall be happy when men shall curse you, and shall 
 revile you, and shall say all manner of evil against you : 
 rejoice then, and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven. 
 In spite of this saying, how often are we not troubled by the 
 words of men and by their judgments ? We cannot bear 
 criticism ; we wish, at any price, to be praised, to be 
 esteemed. Blinded by a vain phantom of reputation, we 
 forget God and His teaching, and the happiness which He 
 promises to the humble. Strange result of pride, ever 
 gnawing at the inmost recesses of our miserable hearts ! 
 What matters it that you are outraged, abased, calumniated ? 
 
THE AUTHOR GOES TO ROME 91 
 
 Whence conies it that this arouses in you these bitter feel- 
 ings, this lively resentment ? Perchance you fear lest you 
 may have too many means of expiation, too much reason to 
 hope for mercy. You have been wrongfully accused ! "Would 
 you prefer that there should be truth in what is alleged 
 against you ? If you have not been guilty of the fault which 
 has been put down to you, how many others are there not 
 of which you are guilty, and of which no one speaks? 
 Examine your conscience : you will hear there a severer voice 
 than those which come from without. These will one day 
 cease, but that will be heard before the Throne of the Judge 
 in whose presence you will one day appear, far from the 
 noise of the world, in the silence of eternity. Think of this, 
 and you will care but little for what men may say of you. 
 
92 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 CHAPTEB IV 
 
 POPE OR KING 
 
 As the year 1825 draws to its close, the correspon- 
 ^>dence shows signs of increasing bitterness against 
 those in power, and the idea of active resistance 
 becomes more and more clearly defined. On Decem- 
 ber 2, he asks Berryer to come and see him, and he 
 adds : ' We shall speak together of liberty of the 
 press, liberty of opinion, and of all the liberties which 
 / abound in France. These people who, on every pos- 
 sible occasion, appeal to reason against us, who 
 accuse us of destroying it, can find nothing better, 
 if we open our mouths to reason with them, than to 
 drag us before the tribunals. What odious hypo- 
 crisy ! . . . Shall no voice be raised to point out the 
 inconsistency of it.' Again, on the 14th of the same 
 month : ' Since persecution is the order of the day, 
 we must speak out as befits the persecuted, with the 
 x boldness of faith which laughs at those who can only 
 Mil the body. We must have that courage which 
 truth alone can give. And besides, humanly speak- 
 ing, the more you dare, the less they dare against 
 you.' 
 
 And on the 22nd : ' We must fight on, whatever 
 maybe the result ! If our banner is not unfurled on 
 
l'Ol'E on KING 93 
 
 the summit of a regenerated society, it will float over 
 the ruins of the world.' 
 
 The position seemed hopeless. Those from whom , 
 better things might have been expected, the Chateau- ; 
 briands and the Bonalds, had gone over to the : 
 enemy. The whole burden of the struggle was 
 thrown upon the shoulders of Feli de Lamennais. 
 He accepted the responsibility, and in March 182G V 
 he opened the campaign with his pamphlet, La ' 
 Religion considdree dans sen Rapports avec VOrdre 
 Politique et Civil, in which he uncompromisingly set ^ 
 forth the Ultramontane position. 
 
 The Abbe Jean felt his spirits rise at the prospect 
 of a contest in which the faith would be championed 
 by his brother. On February 9 he wrote to M. 
 Querret : ' Prepare your ears for a fine row. If he 
 does not go to prison this time, he must despair of 
 ever going there.' Not so Feli. To him the matter 
 was much more serious, more far-reaching in its con- 
 sequences. A new Nuncio, Mgr. Lambruschini, had ^\ 
 arrived in Paris, and it was hoped by many that he 
 might succeed in doing something towards improving 
 the relations between France and the Holy See. 
 Lamennais thought otherwise. On March 18, shortly ' 
 after the appearance of his pamphlet, he wrote to the 
 Comte de Senfft : — 
 
 You are right in expecting some good from the mission 
 of Mgr. L., but I think you are too hopeful. . . . His 
 influence over the Government will be nil. . . . And, even 
 if they were to listen to him, they would not put back the 
 future a single moment. That future lies altogether in the 
 
94 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 i moral state of the peoples, which is but the natural develop- 
 i ment of doctrines handed down to us from the past. 
 Government, to save itself, must change its very essence, 
 and this is impossible. . . . What is radically vicious never 
 reforms itself. I do not speak here of the forms of govern- 
 ment, a question which absorbs men's minds to-day, perhaps 
 because it is the most fruitless. Society is dying, and they 
 are disputing about the clothes with which to cover it, so 
 ; dear is it that the disease is in its clothes ; the wise men 
 are never tired of telling us this, from one end of Europe to 
 the other. My friend, why should we deceive ourselves? 
 We stand on the threshold of a gigantic revolution, which 
 will end in the death or in the regeneration of the peoples, 
 but which will last, whatever happens, so long as there, 
 remain any particles of the great corpse whose dissolution 
 began in 1789. 
 
 The Gallican party in the French Church was 
 composed, for the most part, as has already been 
 stated, of the older clergy, who remembered the per- 
 secutions of the Revolution, and who were content at 
 any price to bask in the sunshine of royal favour. 
 j These were blind to the danger of allying religion 
 j to an effete and artificially maintained monarchy, 
 which owed its existence to the national disgrace of 
 \ 1815, but they were fully alive to the fact that if 
 public opinion were allowed to grow along the lines 
 laid down by the Abbe de Lamennais, the security of 
 their position would be considerably impaired. The 
 y Gallican articles of 1682, which limited the prero- 
 gatives of Rome and exaggerated those of the 
 bishops and of the State, were considered part of the 
 law of the land. Hence it followed that a priest who 
 openly attacked them was guilty of treason against 
 
POPE OR KING 95 
 
 the constitution. This gave an opening to those 
 who were most severely handled in the pamphlet 
 La Beligion considdrde dans ses Bapports avec I'Ordre 
 Politique et Civil, and the author was summoned ton 
 appear in the police courts on April 20. 
 
 It was while waiting for this event, to which 
 I shall presently return, that Lamennais became the 
 recipient of an interesting letter : — 
 
 Friday, March 31. 
 Monsieur, — I have just been to your house, a8 I wished 
 to propose to you personally, and with the frankness which . 
 is as agreeable to your character as it is to mine, that you 
 should be present the day after to-morrow, Sunday, at noon, 
 for the opening of my course'of lectures on positive philo- 
 sophy, the programme of which I enclose. 
 
 If you come I shall feel the value of such a mark of 
 esteem and of interest ; if not, I shall understand your 
 motives, without your taking the trouble to say anything 
 about it ; and I can assure you beforehand that my sympathy 
 of mind and of heart will in no way be altered by the fact. 
 I may add as a piece of news that the audience will be 
 a distinguished one. MM. von Humboldt and de Blainville 
 will be there, perhaps with some other men of learning; 
 the rest will be composed of eight or ten young men of my 
 choice. 
 
 I wished, also, Monsieur, in coming to see you, to thank 
 you as I ought for the way in which you spoke of me in the 
 last number of the Memorial Catholique. I hope I shall 
 soon have an opportunity of giving public expression to the 
 feeling with which I am inspired by the strange methods 
 which mark the intellectual warfare of our time. I shall 
 seize it with the greater eagerness that I have just heard of 
 the great favour with which the ministry seems bent on 
 honouring you. Please accept, in advance, my sincere 
 congratulations. 
 
i>6 TUB ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 Adieu, Monsieur, I hope in any case that it will not be 
 long before I have the pleasure of seeing you. 
 
 Votre devoue, 
 
 AUGUSTE COMTE. 
 
 Lamennais answered on the following day : — 
 
 I am as flattered, Monsieur, as I am touched by your 
 invitation. I should accept it with eagerness were I not 
 just on the point of leaving for the country, where I shall 
 spend a fortnight or so in preparing a little writing, forced 
 on me by the prosecution which the ministry is getting 
 up against me. You may rest assured that I shall not speak 
 of myself, but of things in general ; doctrines are what 
 interest me. How I congratulate myself, Monsieur, on 
 having made your acquaintance, and how honoured I feel by 
 your attachment and by your esteem, I need not tell you. I 
 experienced this before I had the honour of knowing you 
 personally, and the feeling has since increased. I shall seize 
 the first opportunity, on my return from the country, to pay 
 you a visit and to draw closer and closer, by a sympathetic 
 interchange of thought and of affection, that bond of friend- 
 ship which is so very dear to me. 
 
 Votre devout, 
 
 F. de Lamennais. 
 
 It is a curious fact that an acquaintance, so 
 evidently characterised by the deepest respect and 
 sympathy on both sides, should have been passed 
 over by the biographers of Lamennais. Indeed, the 
 knowledge that we possess on this matter comes to 
 us from the disciples of the great philosopher, who, 
 like M. Lonchampt and Dr. Eobinet have described 
 the life of their founder, or from M. Pierre Lafitte, 
 the friend and, in the opinion of some, the successor 
 of Auguste Comte in his work. That the institutor 
 
POPE OR KING 97 
 
 of Positivism looked on it as of considerable im- 
 ~portance may be seen from the fact tbat be often 
 alludes to it in bis letters ; that be drew from it 
 his reasons for hoping for an alliance between^ 
 Catholicism and Positivism, a scheme dear to his last 
 days, and that he mentioned it in his will. 
 
 And yet it is in its influence on Lamennais that 
 this relationship is chiefly interesting. When be 
 returned from Eome in the autumn of 1824, he was, 
 as we have seen, practically turned out of the Grand 
 Almonry, owing to the prejudices aroused by his 
 Ultramontanism. He then retired to La Chenaie, 
 but he did not thereby cut himself off from the world. 
 He was constantly engaged in writing articles for the 1 
 Memorial Catholique, which was practically the organ J 
 of his party. This necessitated his keeping in touch j 
 with contemporary thought, and he was bound to 
 read anything of importance which might appear. 
 Thus, in November 1825, we find him speaking of 
 'A new journal, bad in every respect,' which ' calls \ 
 on men to unite together for the destruction of all ! 
 that remains of vague and mystical ideas, and predicts i 
 that we shall be governed by scientific and industrial 
 authorities.'' Such was his first impression; but he , 
 seems little by little to have become fascinated by 
 the audacity and originality of the views set forth 
 by some of the writers. This journal was the %- 
 Producteur. 
 
 On December 22, he writes :— ' If you read the 
 papers which pride themselves on doctrine, the Globe, 
 the Producteitr, &c, you will find in them other '^ 
 
 H 
 
98 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 indications, more marked and more certain, of a uni- 
 versal revolution. I am becoming every day more 
 and more convinced that it is absolutely inevitable.' 
 
 From an article by M. Lafitte, in the Beviie 
 Occidentale for September 1880, it appears that 
 Comte wrote an essay entitled Considerations sur 
 les Sciences et les Savants, which was published in the 
 Producteur in November 1825. and that a review 
 of it appeared in the Mdmorial Catholique in January 
 1826, under the heading A New School of Philosophy. 
 It was signed X., but the letter already quoted would 
 seem to point to the fact that Lamennais was the 
 author. M. Lafitte gives two extracts from it. 
 
 Speaking of new systems, the writer says : — 
 
 Amongst them, the Ecole Industrielie, of which the 
 Producteur is the organ, is worthy of notice. Although it 
 has for its special object the application of the physical 
 sciences to the arts and to commerce, it also puts forward its 
 theory of the foundation of social order. It is with this 
 aspect of it that we are here concerned. The first beginnings 
 of the system have been set forth in some articles entitled 
 Considerations Philosophiques sur les Sciences et les Savants, 
 and in others on the Spiritual Poioer ; M. Auguste Comte is 
 the author. We can see in them evidences of a mind very 
 superior to the prejudices which characterise your common 
 philosopher. The ensemble of the ideas is very remarkable. 
 M. Auguste Comte does not present himself, like the editors 
 of the Globe, with a doctrine to discover, he comes to us with 
 one fully formed, which he promises to expound in its 
 consecutive parts, though he has already attempted to 
 connect these together. Hoping, then, for a further develop- 
 ment of his theory, we must content ourselves with quoting 
 from these articles a few reflections on the question of the 
 day : the Spiritual Power. 
 
POPE OR KING 99 
 
 ' There follow,' says M. Lafitte, ' two long quota- 
 tions, very characteristic and very well chosen, pointing 
 out the necessity of the advent of a spiritual power 
 capable of ensuring the preponderance of a general 
 system of morals.' Then the writer concludes : — 
 
 After these remarkable thoughts, we cannot but be 
 astounded at the author's hoping to be able to create a new 
 spiritual power. What form can it take in his system ? 
 The agreement of the learned ? Let us suppose, for thf 
 sake of argument, that there is such an agreement, the espri 
 critique, the critical spirit, as M. Comte calls it, remain!, 
 with all its consequences ; the independence of each indi- 
 vidual reason, which, as he admits, necessarily dissolves 
 intellectual unity, produces anarchy in minds and makes it 
 impossible to establish anything, is still there in its entirety; 
 for how can the reason of some men constitute a power to 
 which the reason of other men must submit ? "We shall 
 await an explanation from M. Comte before entering more 
 fully into the subject. 
 
 In an article in the January number of the Bevue 
 Occidentale, 1886, besides the two letters quoted 
 above, M. Lafitte gives us some further details, in- 
 cluding a communication from M. Menjaud to Comte, 
 in which he says : — ' I have given your note to M. de 
 Lamennais, whom I saw myself yesterday evening. 
 He has read all your articles, and has lent me the 
 Proclucteur that I may read the last.' It is dated 
 February 27, 182G, and probably indicates the time 
 at which the two men first met. 
 
 We have seen how Lamennais was invited to be 
 present at the opening of the course of lectures on 
 Positive Philosophy, and how he was forced to decline, 
 
100 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 owing to the position in which he was placed at the 
 moment. But there were other reasons why it was 
 impossible for him to take advantage of the oppor- 
 tunity which thus presented itself to him. Comte 
 broke down from overwork, and was kept out of the 
 arena for some time by a fit of insanity. Yet, even 
 in regard to this he remained a philosopher, and he 
 afterwards alluded to it as a confirmation of his 
 fundamental idea, the laio of the three states. Ac- 
 cording to this law, man, individually and collectively, 
 passes through three stages in the course of his 
 mental and social evolution. These may be roughly 
 termed the theological, the metaphysical, the positive, 
 and the development takes place in all the sciences, 
 one after another, in an order which he expressed by a 
 classification. This classification was based on the 
 principle that the simpler and more abstract sciences 
 come first, and the more complex and less abstract 
 come later in order of time : thus, mathematics came 
 first and were followed by astronomy ; then came 
 2>hysic$, succeeded by biology ; and the whole series 
 was finally concluded by a science or sciences deal- 
 ing with society, religion, morals, &c. In this system 
 the most fully evolved man reached the positive stage 
 in the latest of the sciences, while a less advanced 
 order of intellect only reached one of the earlier 
 sciences, or, in whatever science he had got to, 
 remained in one of the more primitive states of 
 mental development, as, for instance, the meta- 
 physical or theological. Now, from his personal 
 experience in passing through what he called his 
 
POPE OR KING 101 
 
 cerebral crisis, Comte concluded that a brain which 
 became subject to any kind of deterioration would 
 go back over some of the ground which had pre- 
 viously been covered in the course of its evolution, 
 and that this would take place in proportion to the 
 deterioration. 
 
 As a matter of fact, something of this kind 
 happened to him in 1826. He had reached the 
 positive stage in what he then considered the last 
 of the sciences, that which had for its object society. 
 
 &• He fell ill, and, as a result, he became first meta- 
 physical and then theological. The details of what 
 happened are not known. - All that has come down 
 to us is the fact that Comte's relations with his wife 
 were not of the happiest ; that he felt a very natural 
 desire to unburden his heart to some one in whom he 
 had confidence ; that he called on Lamennais, whom 
 
 , he found alone with the Abbe" Gerbet, and that, ' with- 
 out hesitating, he knelt down and disclosed to them, 
 under the seal of the confessional, the internal drama 
 connected with his odious marriage.' After this his 
 Catholic friend seems to have persuaded him of the 
 necessity of recognising the sanctity of the matri- 
 monial tie by submitting to the rites imposed by the 
 Christian Church, and himself to have performed the 
 ceremony. 
 
 When the crisis was over, it is probable that the 
 friendship continued, and that they came to know 
 one another better and better as time went on. In 
 later life Comte spoke of 'some memorable con- 
 ferences which followed the decisive pamphlet in 
 
102 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 which I had publicly consecrated my life to the 
 foundation in the West of the true spiritual power. 
 Then the recognised leader of the Catholic party (the 
 Abbe Lamennais) provoked three public discussions, 
 in which, as worthy adversaries, without any vain 
 hope of mutual conversion, we spontaneously arrived 
 at the idea of a religious alliance.' 
 
 We have practically no information of what took 
 place at these conferences ; one thing only is certain, 
 that Lamennais was profoundly influenced by many x ------- 
 
 things in the positivist philosophy, and possibly alscr'S 
 he was nettled by Comte's idea that Catholicism 
 should represent a simple protest of the past against 
 modern anarchy, leaving to the new system the task 
 of organising society under the direction of a trans- 
 formed and renovated spiritual power. Bearing this 
 in mind, we shall understand the changes which now 
 began to work themselves out in his point of view. 
 
 As has already been stated, the publication of the 
 pamphlet, La Religion consicUrde dam; ses llapjwrts 
 avec VOrdre Politique et Civil, led to its author being 
 summoned to appear in the police courts on April 20 
 to answer certain charges which would be brought 
 against him. At the trial he was accused ' of effacing 
 the boundaries which separate the spiritual from the 
 temporal power, of proclaiming the supremacy and 
 infallibility of the Pope, of recognising in the Sove- 
 reign Pontiff the right of deposing princes and of 
 releasing peoples from the oath of fidelity.' The 
 charge was not denied. Berryer, who appeared for 
 the defence, pleaded the absolute incompetence of a 
 
POPE OR KING 103 
 
 civil court to decide on a question distinctly spiritual 
 (in its nature. The law declared that the Catholic 
 ) religion was the religion of the State; it was for 
 | competent authorities to say what that religion was. 
 ' When he had concluded, Lamennais rose and said : — 
 
 Gentlemen, I have nothing to add to the speech which 
 you have just heard, but I should like to say a few words on 
 the dogmatic questions which are touched upon in my work. 
 Though the Court has no jurisdiction in these matters, never- 
 theless, as they have served as the pretext for this trial, I 
 owe it to my conscience and to the sacred character of my 
 office to declare before the tribunal that I remain firmly 
 attached to the principles set forth in my pamphlet : that is 
 to say, the invariable teaching of the head of the Church; 
 that his faith is my faith, his doctrine my doctrine, and 
 that to my last breath I shall continue to profess and to 
 defend it. 
 
 On the following day the accused was condemned 
 to a fine of 36 francs. The sum was merely nominal, 
 but the principle was of immense importance. Three 
 days later Feli described this judgment in a letter to 
 Mme. de Senfft :— 
 
 The public is unanimous on its astounding absurdity. 
 
 It flies in the face, not only of common sense, but of every 
 
 opinion. ... I owe it to the Church to fight the matter out 
 
 to the bitter end, whatever may be the result. God gives 
 
 me grace to fear nothing. ... I have given notice of a new 
 
 work. . . . The bishops, on their side, are busy with their 
 
 pens ; they are writing declarations of doctrine, which are 
 
 | demanded of them in the name of the king. . . . The thing 
 
 I could not be better done in England. If you know ai of 
 
 these amiable prelates, be so good as to remind theiii it 
 
 there is in the world a person who is called Pope, to \vi,;jw, 
 
 I since the time of St. Peter, custom has attributed some 
 
104 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 authority in the Catholic Church. You may surprise themjf 
 perhaps, but assuredly you will be doing them a good turn, j 
 
 The spring and summer of 1826 were passed in a 
 state of violent agitation and uncertainty. Living 
 between Paris and Versailles, he was able the more 
 easily to observe what went on at the centre of 
 national life, and it is from this period that we must 
 date the final disappearance of an early ideal. 
 
 It will be remembered that at the time of his 
 ordination he had looked upon the Jesuits as an 
 order from which was likely to come the salvation of 
 Israel ; he had even been on the point of taking steps 
 towards committing himself irrevocably to them. 
 Since then an opinion had gradually been forming 
 itself in his mind, fostered, perhaps, partly by the 
 opposition of leading members of the order to the 
 doctrine of the Essai, that they did not understand 
 the times, and, further, that they were incapable of 
 doing so. He saw, or thought he saw, in them the 
 beginnings of that crystallisation which had appeared 
 in, and then destroyed, so many of the great institu- 
 tions thrown up in the course of the evolution of 
 humanity and of the Church. To him the bold pro- 
 gressiveness which had marked their passage through 
 the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries 
 had imperceptibly shrunk into a systematic policy of 
 timid compromisings with the powers of the moment, 
 irrespective of their possible or probable duration. 
 Thus he wrote in July 1826 to M. de Senfft :— 
 
 The J always the same, speak to every man in his 
 
 own tongue. To them, all the world is wrong, but, at the 
 
POPE OR KING 105 
 
 same time, it is right. You say you would not sign the four 
 Articles ? Nor they either, assuredly ; only yesterday, Father 
 such an one said that he would rather lose his right hand. 
 ' But would you sign them ? ' ' Ah ! that is another thing.' 
 Then there are some of the Fathers who think that we enter 
 too warmly into the question. It is certainly possible to give 
 strong reasons on either side, it is a great mistake to imagine 
 that the Society has any opinion in the matter. This policy 
 would be amusing if it were less distressing. 
 
 Thus, to whichever side he turned for support, his 
 appeal was met by indifference or by open hostility. 
 Those to whom the mission of regenerating society 
 had been handed down by the past, seemed unwilling 
 to commit themselves to a- bold and resolute policy. 
 
 Broken in mind and body by the weight of the 
 responsibility which was thrown upon him, his health 
 gave way, and he was ordered to spend a month at a 
 watering place in the Pyrenees. 
 
 It was while there that he was seen, for the first 
 time, by Forgues, then a boy of thirteen. The latter 
 was staying at St. Sauveur, with his mother, who 
 received a letter from the Baron de Vitrolles, recom- 
 mending to her his illustrious friend. The boy was 
 sent with a letter to Lamennais. On hearing the 
 name he turned over in his childish mind all that 
 he had heard of the great writer. He pictured to 
 himself one of those Fathers of the Church whom he 
 had seen in frescoes, or on stained glass windows — 
 
 with keys and book, or with a symbolic sword, flowing robes, 
 brilliantly coloured or dark, and with a long streaming 
 beard~". . The disillusion was complete. ... I was shown 
 into a little room at the back of one of those houses, built 
 
106 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 against the rocks, which form the only street in the village. 
 ... In the semi-darkness of the place I could just distin- 
 guish two men — one of them, thin and sorry-looking, with 
 his head lowered on his breast, was reclining on a large 
 straw arm-chair ; the other, standing beside him, his head 
 raised, his shoulders drawn back, and with keenness in his 
 glance, with a Southern face, dark and full, rounded and 
 firm in its outline, but without any very marked character : 
 one of those which would have looked as natural under the 
 hipi of the soldier as under the tonsure of the priest. 
 
 The first was Lamennais ; the second his travelling com- 
 panion, his garde-malade, the Abbe de Salinis. 
 
 Both of them received me, told me that they would go 
 in person to thank my mother, and invited me to come 
 and see them often, morning or evening — in fact, when- 
 ever I wished. Thus I found myself, child as I was, at 
 once, without being able to appreciate the value of it, 
 admitted to an intimacy which the greatest men would have 
 envied me. 
 
 I amused myself (if I may be pardoned the expression) 
 by comparing the two abbes. They took me with them in 
 their walks, which were never long. . . . Lamennais, soon 
 becoming tired, would often ask us to stop near some clump 
 of trees. We sat down on the grass. Sometimes the Abbe 
 de Salinis would leave us ; and then, either having nothing 
 to say to me or to save his feeble breath, he drew from his 
 pocket his copy of the ' Imitation of Jesus Christ ' in Latin, 
 and got me to translate to him aloud, here and there inter- 
 rupting my crude word for word rendering of it by commen- 
 taries full of unction and of grace. 
 
 The Abbe de Salinis came back. He encouraged Lamen- 
 nais to use his returning strength. Slowly, very slowly, we 
 walked along the banks of the river, crossed over by the 
 rickety foot-bridge, and climbed up on the other side into 
 the delightful meadows. It was there (I remember it as if it 
 had been yesterday) that one day we spent a whole hour in 
 throwing stones into a narrow opening between the walls of 
 
POPE OR KING 107 
 
 a little sheepfold. The question was, who could get the 
 greatest number of pebbles into this improvised target. The 
 Abbe de Salinis won easily, but I think Lamennais was even 
 less successful than I was. 
 
 At this time there was at St. Sauveur a young Eoyalist 
 writer, A. Bazin de Eaucou. He always came with us in 
 our evening walks, but rarely in the morning ones. I can 
 see him still, tall, refined, handsome. ... I remember one 
 detail in those brilliant conversations in which I had ended 
 by taking a lively interest. I had admitted, not without 
 blushing, that I had read ' Gil Bias ' more than once. . . . 
 Bazin, rigorous as the Quotidlenne, for which he wrote, 
 blamed the tolerance which had allowed such a poisonous 
 book to come into my bands. It was Lamennais who took, 
 not my part, but that of my excellent mother. ' Bah ! ' he 
 said, ' the important point is that the child should read, and 
 that he should like reading. The choice of books may come 
 later.' 
 
 It is not improbable that, as he slowly recovered 
 his strength at St. Sauveur, Feli may have discussed 
 with the Abbe de Salinis the future prospects of the 
 Ultramontane party in France. Forgues was too 
 young to understand such things, and he did not 
 realise that M. Bazin, who is mentioned here, was 
 fighting in the ranks of the opposing school of thought, 
 whose principal organ was the Quotidienne. It is 
 possible that these daily walks, in company with the 
 Gallican writer, may have intensified the desire for 
 decisive action in the two priests, leading them, when 
 alone, to talk over matters and to develop plans for 
 future organisation. Indeed, the idea had already 
 been suggested. In January 1825 the Abbe Gerbet 
 had written to M. de Salinis : — 
 
108 TIIE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 M. de Lamennais, thinking over the project of an asso- 
 ciation of ecclesiastics, of which he has often spoken to you, 
 has come to the conclusion that we might begin by living 
 together, say four or five of us, with the object of studying 
 and writing. The character of such a community would 
 soon attract public attention. We could then increase our 
 numbers, by calling in, from to time, a few young men. 
 
 In October 1826, Lamennais returned to Paris with 
 his companions. The ground seems to have already 
 been prepared for the carrying out of the scheme, 
 for, on the seventh of that month, Gerbet had written 
 to M. de Senfft to inform him of the approaching 
 return of the travellers, and he had added : — ' M. 
 Feli will find his room ready for him. I am moving 
 to-day into our new house. M. Fell's room looks out 
 into the garden . . . and is out of reach of the noise 
 of the Bite tVEnfer. The Abb6 Kohrbacher is coming 
 to live with us.' 
 
 We are, then, not altogether unprepared for a 
 
 scene described by Mgr. Kicard in his volume on 
 
 the founder of the Mennaisian School. Whatever be 
 
 its historic value it is sufficiently characteristic in 
 
 . all its details to be worthy of insertion here. 
 
 Two young priests, both of them chaplains of the 
 College Henri IV., were conversing sadly one evening in 
 December 1826, in a little sitting room where they were in 
 the habit of conferring together on the difficulties of their 
 ministry. . . . 
 
 The one, vigorous, ardent, martial in his bearing, with 
 eyes which were lighted up from time to time by sudden 
 flashes of eagerness, was the Abbe de Salinis. The other, 
 more reserved in his manner, almost timid, more at home 
 as a listener than in speaking, was the Abbd Gerbet. 
 
POPE OR KING 109 
 
 But it was the Abbe Gerbet wlio had opened the con- 
 versation on that evening by a melancholy description of 
 the disappointments of the day. 
 
 M. de Salinis interrupted him. Boiling over with 
 youthful enthusiasm, he laid bare his convictions on the 
 possibility of successful action in favour of Catholicism, 
 
 ' France,' he said, ' is tired of incredulity, and, above all, 
 of that brutal incredulity which tramples on the most inti- 
 mate feelings of the human soul, naturally Christian. . . . 
 It aspires to a positive belief which, without shocking the 
 mind, may satisfy the needs of the heart ; in a word,' cried the 
 young chaplain, 'France desires a rational belief ! There 
 lies our hope,' he concluded, ' but there also lies the danger.' 
 
 ' To realise the one and to neutralise the other, the work 
 of the Catholic Apostolate should tend to a double result : 
 to keep up and develop the desire for faith ; to demonstrate, 
 in every possible way, that the only rational faith is in the 
 Apostles' Creed, explained and developed by the Church." 
 
 At this point the conversation of the young priests was 
 interrupted by the entry of a third party . . . who was 
 received by the two chaplains with visible respect. He had 
 heard the last words, and he said : — 
 
 ' You wish to prove to the age that Catholicism is the 
 only rational religion ; that is well, but it is not enough. 
 You must show it that if it does not accept the Catholic 
 creed, it excludes itself from the society of reasonable 
 beings ; the common consent of all ages and of all peoples ; 
 in a word, that it is mad ; ' . . . and he continued with 
 warmth : ' The longer I live the more certain I become 
 that I can force these good people, so confident in their 
 incredulity, to say their Credo to the last syllable, or to 
 admit by their silence (for I shall forbid them to open their 
 mouths) that they cannot say, I am / ... To work then, 
 and we shall bend this nineteenth century under the yoke 
 of Catholicism.' 
 
 The gentle Abbe Gerbet, he who was to be the Me- 
 lancthon of the new Luther, replied timidly : — 
 
110 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 ' Master, do you not fear that you may irritate reason, 
 instead of subduing it, by so absolute a proceeding ? Would 
 it not be better gradually to reconcile the human soul to 
 religion by pointing out the intimate harmonies which 
 exist between its dogmas, its precepts, its institutions, and 
 the deepest needs of humanity? Is it possible to resist, 
 for example, that demonstration which reveals in the 
 Eucharist the most abundant source of social and moral 
 life-:— in a word, the great lever which raises man to heaven ? 
 And what is said of the Eucharist can be said of all the 
 sacraments, the channels through which true life flows out 
 and spreads itself over the human race.' 
 
 ' Well ! ' said the previous speaker, ' this point of view 
 completes mine : I do not exclude it.' 
 
 Then he seemed to reflect, and looking at the two young 
 priests as if he would read their inmost souls, he added : 
 ' But, since we are agreed on the possibility of exercising an 
 extended influence over our poor diseased society, why 
 should we not unite our efforts ? A single man has but one 
 voice, feeble enough at best ; but an association ! ' 
 
 Thus was founded the famous Mennaisian School. 
 A little band of resolute men had taken upon them- 
 selves the apparently hopeless task of regenerating^ 
 a society in whose throat the death-rattle was already 
 making itself heard, and of forcing it, whether it 
 would or no, to return to life and health. What 
 great things lay hidden in these small beginnings we 
 shall presently see, but, meanwhile, we must return 
 to the personal doings of him who was the soul of 
 the undertaking. 
 
 Lamennais spent the first months of the year 
 1827 in Paris, but the state of his health seems to 
 have caused considerable anxiety to his friends, so 
 much so, that the Abbe Jean came to the capital in 
 
POPE OR KING 111 
 
 April for the purpose of accompanying him to La 
 ChSnaie, where it was thought that he would obtain 
 that absolute repose which was so necessary to him. 
 The two brothers made the journey in short stages, 
 and reached their Breton home towards the end of 
 the month. As soon as he had settled down, Feli 
 seems to have tried to occupy his mind with the 
 study of Italian, but he found it impossible entirely 
 to banish from it all thought of the great scheme 
 which he had set on foot. On May 2 he wrote 
 to Mme. de Senfft :— 
 
 I have for some time been persuaded that a general 
 revolution is inevitable, and that all the efforts of right 
 thinking men should be directed to the future. It is neces- 
 sary to lay in advance the foundations of a new society ; 
 the old one is rotten, it is dead, and it cannot be raised 
 again. It is mere folly to put one's trust in Governments 
 which are no longer governments, and which can no more 
 become so. Our work lies in the creation of peoples ; that 
 will always be possible till the time appointed by God for 
 the end of things. The Church has a great mission before 
 it, which it will fulfil ; but the hour is not yet come, though 
 it cannot be far off. 
 
 The hour was not yet come. Jean returned to 
 his work, and Feli's right-hand man, the Abbe Ger- 
 bet, came to La Chenaie in July. On the 18th 
 of that month he wrote to M. de Senfft apologising 
 for the fact that his host had not answered the last 
 letter which he had received from Italy. He said : 
 'M. Feli is in bed, recovering from an attack of 
 fever, which lasted for eighteen hours. The first 
 symptoms of it appeared last Sunday. He is now 
 better, but he is still too weak to write.' 
 
112 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 Gerbet was mistaken ; this was but the beginning 
 of a very serious illness, which, after a duration of 
 several weeks, reduced the sufferer to such a state of 
 feebleness that he stood for a moment as it were on 
 the brink of the grave. On July 29 the Abbe had 
 once more to write to M. de Senfft : — 
 
 In my letter of last week I told you of the illness of 
 M. Feli, and, at the same time when I wrote, his state was 
 not such that I should have felt justified in alarming you. 
 But since then there has been a bilious fever wish spasms, 
 at first interrupted, then continuous faintings, and now a 
 terrible weakness. M. Blaize came in the first days of the 
 illness, and M. Jean has just arrived. We are in consterna- 
 tion. I should be glad to be able to think that our affection 
 magnified in our eyes the danger of his state ; but I cannot. 
 If I have waited so long before writing to you, it is because 
 I have been hoping, from day to day, for some improvement 
 of which I could tell you. But do not think that all hope 
 is lost ; no, no. I had faith in what remained for him to 
 do, for the accomplishment of his mission, and I have not 
 lost this faith. ... I shudder at the thought of the shock 
 this letter will cause you. 
 
 In the first days of August Feli partially recovered, 
 but there was a relapse towards the middle of the 
 month, which once more threw his friends into con- 
 sternation. It was not till September 8, when 
 the danger was past, that Gerbet summoned up 
 courage to describe in detail the whole course of the 
 illness to M. de Senfft. On that day he wrote : — 
 
 I cannot tell you how much he has suffered from his 
 frightful spasms, nor with what patience, nor yet what I 
 experienced myself when, on two separate occasions, he 
 fainted in my arms. I thought he was dead. 
 
POPE OR KING 113 
 
 sad memories ; I pass to those which are more consoling, 
 but which are connected with the most terrible moments. 
 
 He had asked at an early stage for the last sacraments, 
 and, the day on which he received them, was very beautiful 
 in his strong faith and his humble resignation. . . . Face to 
 face with death , . .he said to me from time to time 
 things which broke my heart, but which at the same time 
 comforted me. 
 
 ' Of what use,' he said, ' are honours, riches, reputation, 
 when one has come to this ? ' I answered that he had never 
 cared much for them. ' My friend,' he said, ' I should like 
 to go aivay : I have had enough of the earth.' I remember 
 that one night, when he was a little better, to divert him I 
 told him that it was a beautiful night, and that the moon- 
 light was splendid ; he tried to raise himself that he might 
 • see it through the window, and he answered, falling back 
 again : ' For my peace, God grant that it may be the last.' 
 When his dear brother arrived (it was he who gave him the 
 last sacraments) he said to him, after some moments' con- 
 versation, ' I leave you the finest thing in the world — the truth 
 to defend.' At another time, I asked him whether he would 
 like anything to drink ; his ideas were becoming confused, 
 he did not understand my question, but, interpreting it in a 
 manner analogous to his habitual thoughts, he answered, 
 ' What can one desire but that the will of God should be 
 done.' This brings me to the most cruel moments. 
 Alas ! after the postscript of my sad letter of July 27-28, 
 which must have reassured you a little. What a day we 
 passed on the 27th ! The heat was stifling ; from six to ten 
 o'clock we believed him to be in his agony. His poor 
 brother begged me to renew the absolution of the dying. 
 
 At eleven he began to get better. . . . 
 
 This chapter may fittingly be concluded with 
 some extracts from a letter written by Feli himself 
 to Madame de Senfft, on September 25, the first day 
 on which he was allowed to put pen to paper. 
 
 i 
 
114 THE ABBE" DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 So I am back again in the world. I had touched the 
 port, but a powerful hand thrusts me forth once more into 
 the middle of the waves, iterum jactatus in alto. Alas ! I 
 had had enough of the earth and should not have been sorry 
 to leave it. 
 
 The first symptom of my illness was a bilious fever ; but 
 as soon as this attack had subsided, another, the nervous 
 character of which I soon recognised, began to show signs 
 of its presence. I told the doctor of it, and expressed my 
 opinion that it was here that the principal evil lay hidden ; 
 he paid no attention, and I became rapidly worse. My 
 brother and my brother-in-law had been sent for and they 
 were with me. I received, while still conscious, the last 
 sacraments. God gave me strength, and I did not suffer for 
 a moment from regret or anxiety, though I knew and fully 
 realised the precariousness of my state. As it became hour 
 by hour more alarming, they called in another doctor from 
 Dinan, and fortunately he judged it prudent, from what had 
 been told him, to bring the instruments necessary for an 
 operation, the slightest delay in the performance of which 
 would infallibly have caused my death. God so willed it 
 that he did not deceive himself for a moment as to the 
 nature of the illness or the treatment required ; the least 
 hesitation would have rendered all remedies useless. As it 
 was, the evil made frightful progress. On Sunday, July 29, 
 I was at death's door. Pulse and respiration had ceased for 
 some seconds, and the doctor waited only for the moment 
 when I should pass away. Nevertheless, wishing to neglect 
 no possible means, he asked for some ammonia ; they looked 
 about and discovered some in my cupboard ; he succeeded 
 in bringing about a slight beating of the heart — it was the / 
 beginning of my return to life. The danger continued for. 
 some days, but it ceased altogether on the Feast of St. Peter's 
 Chains. My convalescence has been long and painful, 
 interrupted by spasms, suspended by a relapse caused by the 
 almost sudden death of a favourite servant to whose bedside 
 I was called, in the middle of the night, that I might hastily 
 
POPE OE KING 115 
 
 hear his confession. At this moment I am totally wanting 
 in strength, but that is a matter of time. ... I should 
 certainly like to pay you a visit, and to repose myself in the 
 soft sunshine of your friendship, but just now I cannot think 
 of travelling; I could not bear it. And besides, I must 
 employ, in defence of religion, the time which God has left 
 me, perhaps only for that. . . . Good-bye, good-bye, I must 
 end this for my poor head is tired. 
 
 i i' 
 
115 TIIE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 
 
 Lamennais was profoundly impressed by the fact of 
 his illness and of his recovery. He was convinced 
 that he had been dragged back into life only that he 
 might become the instrument of Providence in the 
 carrying out of its designs in the world. 
 
 ' Persuaded,' he said, in a letter of October 2, 1827, 
 ' persuaded that in snatching me from the arms of 
 death, where I had already as it were fallen asleep, 
 She only wished to give me time to recall to society 
 the duties which it has forgotten, I shall hold it a 
 crime and a direct turning away from what God de- 
 mands of me, if for my personal satisfaction, or even 
 for that of my dearest friends, I were to interrupt 
 for a single moment the work which lies before me.' 
 
 From the closing months of 1827 to the final 
 catastrophe of July 1830, his ideas tend gradually to 
 assume a more definite shape. Hitherto we have 
 seen him looking indeed to the future, partly in fear, 
 partly in aspiration, expecting a revolution, a uni- 
 versal upheaving of some kind, but vague and intan- 
 gible — a great and terrible movement, which will lead 
 society through a period of anarchy to the final 
 triumph of the Catholic Church. He now begins to 
 
THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1880 117 
 
 see his way more clearly amid the tangled mass of 
 facts constituting the groundwork of social science, 
 and, above all, he is beginning to see that there is 
 such a science, a point which, as I have shown in a 
 former chapter, he did not clearly realise, though he 
 suggested it in the last volumes of the Essai sur 
 V Indifference. Thus in a letter of November 1, to 
 Mine, de Senfft, he speaks of ' a work on Society,' in 
 which 'the questions which I have already dealt 
 with will be set forth from a new and a broader 
 standpoint.' ! 
 
 And in another, on the 30th of the same month, to 
 M. Berryer : — ' The men. who appear to lead have 
 almost always less part in the progress of events than 
 is generally supposed ; they are themselves carried 
 along, and the real force which moulds the future 
 lies in ideas universally prevalent, ivliose action can 
 be calculated, as in the material world that of phy- 
 sical forces.' In this it is not difficult to see the 
 result of his connection with Auguste Comte. 
 
 But there were other circumstances tending to a 
 modification of his point of view, which, if less pro- 
 found in their bearing on the growth of his mind, 
 were more immediate in their effects. He was 
 beginning to interest himself in the internal affairs 
 of the other countries of Europe. 
 
 By the end of the year 1827 he had come to a 
 thorough knowledge of the Italian language, and this 
 made it possible for him to read many things calcu- 
 lated to arouse his sympathy for the way in which 
 things were progressing in that country. Nothing 
 
118 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 could have been more congenial to his habitual way 
 of thinking than the idea of a nation owing its inde- 
 pendence and its liberties to the leadership of the 
 Sovereign Pontiff, which formed the basis of much 
 that contributed to the patriotic enthusiasm of the 
 Italian people. We are not, then, surprised to find 
 him in November 1827, writing to the Comtesse 
 Louise de Senfft to ask her to send him the novel of 
 Manzoni, which he has seen reviewed, or to learn 
 that he afterwards became an enthusiastic admirer of 
 the author of the Promessi sposi. 
 
 Nor did he confine himself to one aspect only of 
 the writings of that brilliant but unfortunate nation. 
 
 In December 1827 he wrote to Mme. de Senfft : — 
 
 I have not read Foscarini — who is the author? Italian 
 literature is tending to take in the north a direction which 
 may put new life into it. The south is still languishing, but 
 the movement will spread, and if, instead of making use of 
 it, they try to put it down by force, it will become, above all 
 things, hostile and dangerous. What astonishes me more 
 than anything is the fact that governments seem every- 
 where incapable of understanding their true interests. I 
 took it into my head to read Jacopo Ortiz, the author of 
 which has just died near London. It is a mere copy of -'. 
 Werther, a kind of thing which I do not like, and which .' 
 essentially belongs to a system of destructive ideas. Monti 
 preferred the Purgatorio to the two other parts of the great 
 poem of Dante. The last stanzas of the Paradiso seem to ' 
 me superior ; they enrapture me. I advise you to read J 
 Petrarch — he is sometimes obscure, artificial, and strained ; 
 but, taking it all round, his poetry is marvellously beautiful 
 and pregnant with feeling. I have just begun Villani. He 
 reminds me of the simplicity of our old memoirs, but he has 
 not their grace, their artlessness or their charm. It is a 
 
THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 119 
 
 curious fact that Italian prose should never have been able, 
 in any work, to stamp itself with an original or distinctive 
 character. Machiavelli himself is dull, with neither eloquence 
 nor strength nor imagination in his style. In quite another 
 sphere, F. Liguori, so esteemed for his Tuscan elegance, is 
 still more feeble ; he bores me to death. Speaking of the prose 
 writers, I was forgetting Boccaccio, but I hardly like to 
 mention him, and besides, his merit lies more in purity of 
 expression and in a kind of simplicity in his dialogues — a 
 simplicity, it is true, crude and vulgar — than in any of the 
 higher qualities. 
 
 Passing from Italy to countries nearer to his 
 northern home, Lamennais was especially impressed 
 'f- by the position of two of them, Ireland and Belgium. 
 Kumours which reached him from the first strength- 
 ened in his mind the idea of united Catholic action, 
 and he dreamt of the role of an O'Connell. In 
 February 1829 . he wrote to Mine, de Senfft : — ' We 
 have nothing to hope for here till energy is aroused 
 among Catholics. Before that happens ideas must be 
 revolutionised, which will take time. In Ireland the 
 Catholics have got themselves a hearing.' In the 
 same letter he quotes a note on the Belgians, who 
 had raised the standard of active resistance to the 
 Government of the Netherlands, which had attempted 
 to interfere in the internal affairs of the Church : — 
 'Belgium is saved. The Government has been so 
 terrified by the general movement [of the people] 
 that the . . . new bishops have been nominated as 
 they desired. A short time ago the hereditary prince 
 told the Comte de Merode that he quite recognised 
 the injustice of the treatment which had been meted 
 
120 TIIE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 out to the Catholics, and that if he came to the 
 throne they should have nothing to complain of in 
 him.' In another letter of about the same date he 
 says : — ' Belgian' Catholics are far in advance of us 
 ... for with them the principles of Christianity 
 have not been obscured by Gallicanism ; they realise 
 the necessity of curing themselves of that terrible 
 disease called Eoyalism, which, little by little, has 
 destroyed all the forces of society.' 
 
 Thus he followed, step by step, the progress of 
 , the Kevolution which was to end in the total inde- 
 pendence of the most Catholic country in the modern 
 world. Nor did he stop here. Raising his eyes and 
 prophetically sweeping the horizon of European 
 politics, he saw everywhere the same signs of ap- 
 proaching dissolution. On July 7, 1830, within a 
 few days of the final catastrophe, he wrote to the 
 Marquis de Coriolis : — ' A great commotion seems to 
 me to be inevitable, and in this France will not be 
 alone ; the whole South of Europe has its eyes fixed 
 on her ; twenty millions of men — in Italy, in Spain, 
 in Portugal — will suddenly rise at the first cry of 
 liberty which goes forth from her.' 
 
 But how were matters progressing in that country 
 which was to give the signal for a general rising ? 
 
 Lamennais recovered from his illness in Septem- 
 ber 1827, just in time to witness the last agony of 
 the Villele Ministry, which had been in office since the 
 accession of Charles X. in 1824. Of the importance 
 of that Ministry it is sufficient to say that it found 
 the Bourbon monarchy strong and comparatively 
 
THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 121 
 
 popular, and that it left it irretrievably ruined. 
 In the closing months of 1827 the Government found 
 itself in steady opposition to the majority of the 
 Chamber. Had M. de Yillele consulted his dignity 
 rather than his desire to retain office, he would have 
 resigned, leaving to his opponents the task of dealing 
 with a crisis for which they were in part responsible. 
 But he thought otherwise, and so gave to the world 
 the contemptible spectacle of a minister clinging 
 convulsively to a position which he felt to be slipping 
 away from him. This was too much for the gravity of 
 Lamennais. On December 21 he wrote to Berryer : — 
 
 Do you not think, my dear friend, that if one were as 
 anxious to save one's soul as that man is to remain a minister 
 it would be as if one were already in heaven ? But such 
 energy is only for hell — hell in this world or hell in the next, 
 For I do not think that there can be down there, in the 
 empire of shades, any prison equal to those official residences 
 so desired and so sought after, at the gates of which stand 
 and watch the ghosts whom iEneas saw at the entrance of 
 the kingdom of darkness. Why then, Mr. President, do you 
 require so much pressing ? Come, now, a little reason . . . 
 but, instead of listening, there he sits counting : one vote, 
 two votes, ten votes, fifty votes ! A minority of fifty ! The 
 pen falls from his hand, his head is weighed down ; he is 
 absorbed by some great thought. Then he begins once 
 more to count ; his face expands ; he has discovered a new 
 combination, a law of attraction, hitherto unknown, which 
 will cause the legislative bodies (they are not celestial bodies) , 
 to gravitate round their centre, which is himself. It is 
 done ; the ministerial universe will go on. On the first day 
 he is hopeful ; on the second day he is hopeful ; but on the 
 third— good-bye to the law, good-bye to attraction, good-bye 
 to the universe, good-bye to everything ! And he says : ' At 
 
122 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 least understand that after me there will be no more sun. 
 I warn you, at most the moon will remain to you.' This 
 is met by a chorus of voices: 'Long live the moon! We 
 love the moon ! We want the moon ! Give us the moon ! ' 
 And I think that, willing or no, the sun will have to give 
 place, which would be very sad if we were not already in mid- 
 winter.' 
 
 And the Abbe de Lamennais had reason to wel- 
 come the approaching fall of this ministry. The 
 situation was curiously complicated, and at first 
 sight the position of the Ultramontane priest seems 
 somewhat paradoxical. The Government had been 
 defeated by the Liberal majority, which had set 
 before itself as an ideal the establishing on a per- 
 manent footing of those revolutionary institutions 
 which he hated and looked on as supremely anti- 
 Christian. One of the causes, if not the principal 
 cause, of the unpopularity of M. de Villele was the 
 fact that he had attempted to shield the Church 
 from the ecclesiastical proposals of the Liberals. 
 Under him the office of Minister of Public Worship 
 had been held by Frayssinous, Bishop of Hermopolis, 
 who, before the appearance of the Essai stir Vlnclif- 
 fdrence, had, from his Conferences, been looked upon 
 as the most successful contemporary defender of the 
 Catholic faith. To the ordinary observer, then, it 
 might easily have seemed that the interests of 
 religion were intimately bound up with those of the 
 existing rdgime, and that the blow which destroyed 
 the ministry was principally and fundamentally aimed 
 at Catholicism itself. Indeed, Lamennais thoroughly 
 realised the truth of this opinion, but he did not stop 
 
TILE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 12S 
 
 here. Searching into the deeper meaning of events, 
 he asked himself the question : ' Why should these 
 things be ? ' And the answer came to him, wafted on 
 the breath of all the ages of humanity : ' It is because 
 the Church, in its official representatives, has re- 
 nounced its birthright.' For what was called religion 
 was a mockery, a mere parody of religion, a State 
 organisation of opinion in the highest matters calcu- 
 lated to sustain the puffed and swollen pride of a 
 bastard monarchy which hoped to maintain itself 
 by sacrificing all else to the Revolution. What 
 wonder, then, if the people looked on Catholicism 
 simply as the keystone ,of a gigantic conspiracy 
 against their moral as well as against their material 
 advancement, and if they had grown to hate it ! To 
 Lamennais such hatred was preferable to the indif- 
 ference against which he had protested in the early 
 years of the Restoration ; nor was it without its doc- 
 trinal basis. The Governments which had succeeded 
 one another since 1815 had imitated their prede- 
 cessors in insisting on the acceptance by the clergy 
 of the Gallican Articles of 1C82, which declared that 
 the decisions of the Pope were subject to ratification 
 by a general council or the tacit acceptance of the 
 universal Church, thus making it possible for the 
 bishops of any nation, by a simple protest, to prac- 
 tically nullify them, and which further laid down 
 the principle that Papal utterances were, in the pub- 
 lishing of them, subject to the jurisdiction of the 
 civil power. Lamennais had, as we have seen, in 
 1826, boldly proclaimed the opposite theory, and had 
 
124 THE ABBE BE LAMENNAIS 
 
 even maintained the right of the Sovereign Pontiff to 
 release subjects from the oath of fidelity. Connect- 
 ing this with his previous statement, that Catholicism 
 was but the summing up of the unanimous voice 
 of the peoples, and with the fact that, through his 
 relations with Comte and the increase of experience, 
 he had come to a clearer understanding of that 
 element of movement, of evolution, which he had 
 not fully realised in his earlier work, it is not difficult 
 to see by what process of reasoning, without any 
 fundamental change in his point of view, he began to 
 perceive that there was no very great gulf of sepa- 
 ration between himself and the Liberal party. The 
 deposing power of the Pope and the deposing power 
 of the people were but two expressions for the same 
 thing, with this difference, that while the first was 
 orderly, and might be looked on as a guarantee of 
 cooperation with the general progress of human 
 affairs, the second contained within itself dangerous 
 gerrns of an all-destroying anarchy, and was only 
 justified by the fact that the other had been denied 
 and made impossible of application by those in 
 power. 
 
 This much being said, we may return to our nar- 
 rative. 
 
 It was in vain that M. de Villele strained every 
 nerve to get himself maintained in office. The posi- 
 tion was untenable, and in January 1828 he resigned. 
 This event was followed by the formation of the 
 Martignac Ministry, which held office till August 
 1829. 
 
THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 125 
 
 During the first weeks of the new administration, 
 Frayssinous continued to hold the portfolio for eccle- 
 siastical affairs, but, in March, he had to give way 
 before the hostility of the opposition to everything 
 which recalled the days of M. de Villele. Lamennais 
 mentions the fact, in a letter to Mme. de Senfft, 
 dated March 10, 1828 :— ' As I prophesied . . . 
 Frayssinous is withdrawing after having brought 
 France to the verge of schism. The party is singing 
 the praises of his successor,' 
 
 That successor was Feutrier, Bishop of Beauvais, 
 and it is not too much to say that from the narrow, 
 immediate point of view, his policy weighed more 
 heavily on the Ultramontane position than that of 
 his predecessor. The new Government, owing its 
 existence to the decisive victory of the Liberals at 
 the end of 1827, was bound to make concessions. 
 From this state of things resulted the two famous 
 Ordinances of June 1828 : the first, depriving the 
 Jesuits of the right of directing or teaching in col- 
 leges ; the second, limiting the number of semi- 
 naries and regulating many things in their internal 
 discipline. 
 
 It was expected that the bishops, who had almost 
 unanimously accepted the Gallican propositions, 
 would not offer any considerable opposition, but, in 
 this the framers of the decrees were disappointed. 
 On July 14 the Abbe Jean was able to write to M. de 
 Senfft :— 
 
 No doubt the Church will be subjected to fresh trials : 
 they will be painful and bloody, but we shall be victorious ; 
 
126 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 a violent crisis is the only thing that can save us. Porta 
 inferinonprcevalebunt. Let us have confidence and courage. 
 Is it not a grand thing to see the French episcopate, which 
 we thought so feeble, rising as one man in the hour of danger, 
 turning towards Eome and saying with the prophet, Levavi 
 oculos meos in montes unde veniet auxilium mihi ? 
 
 And this opposition made it practically impossible 
 to carry out the measures forced on the Government 
 by the Chamber. For it was necessary, at any rate 
 in dealing with the seminaries, to get authentic 
 reports from the bishops on those already existing in 
 their several dioceses, and these were in many cases 
 refused. One of the answers received by the Bishop 
 of Beauvais was especially characteristic. He had 
 sent an official communication, amongst others, to 
 Clermont-Tonnerre, Archbishop of Toulouse, inviting 
 him to send in the required information. The only 
 reply he received was the following :— 
 
 Monseigneub, — The motto of my family, which was 
 given to it in 1120 by Callistus II., is this : Etiamsi omnes, 
 ego non. It is also that of my conscience. 
 
 I have the honour to be, with the respectful consideration 
 due to a minister of the King, 
 
 A.J. Cardinal Archbishop of Toulouse. 
 
 The position of the ministry was embarrassing. 
 Placed between the possibility of schism, and the 
 practical certainty of revolution, one course only was 
 open to them, and Chateaubriand was directed to 
 work the matter at Borne. As a result, on Sep- 
 tember 25, a circular was sent by Cardinal de Latil 
 to all the bishops. 
 
THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 127 
 
 Monseigneur, — The King having deigned to communi- 
 cate to me the answers of Borne relative to the ordinances 
 of June 16, and having invited me to impart them to yon, I 
 have the honour to inform you that His Holiness, convinced of 
 the absolute devotion of the French Bishops to His Majesty, 
 as he is of their love of peace and of all other true interests 
 of our holy religion, has answered that the Bishops should 
 confide in the wisdom of the King in the carrying out of the 
 ordinances and should continue in agreement with the 
 throne. 
 
 It was natural enough that some doubt should 
 have been thrown on the strict authenticity of this 
 laconic communication, but as Rome, on being 
 appealed to, judged it prudent to maintain silence, 
 the document acquired the desired authority. 
 
 So the Government was saved. The sop of eccle- 
 siastical independence had been thrown to the Cer- 
 berus of the Revolution. 
 
 The movement of 1789 had been directed pri- 
 marily against the clergy and the nobility — so appear 
 to have reasoned the friends of the Restoration ; if 
 monarchy had fallen in '92, it was only a natural 
 result of its having identified itself with these fallen 
 institutions ; but the Revolution itself was not, in 
 principle, directed against the Monarchical system. 
 The fact that the contrary had appeared to be the 
 case was due to a mere accident, tragic enough, no 
 doubt, but still not irremediable. To prevent future 
 mistakes it was necessary for Royalists to convince 
 the Revolution of their goodwill. The nobles had 
 already been deprived of power and influence, but the 
 clergy, though severely hit, still showed signs of life, 
 
128 TIIE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 and might some day become embarrassing. It was 
 not denied that the monarchy was Catholic, or that 
 its representative was the Most Christian King, nor, 
 again, that religious authority was necessary to keep 
 alive the idea of the sanctity of the State establish- 
 ment. But a sacrifice had to be made, a Jonah had 
 to be thrown over as a peace-offering to the angry 
 deep. M. de Coriolis showed that he understood the 
 situation when he said that a particular speech from 
 the throne could be summed up in the words : ' I 
 love papa, the good God : I love mama, the Invo- 
 lution.' 
 
 As I have said, the successful carrying through 
 of this masterly stroke of policy was somewhat 
 impaired by the resistance of the bishops, who could 
 not be got to see the matter in a proper light. But 
 now Borne had spoken, and so even the most uncom- 
 promising Ultramontane must be satisfied. Thus, 
 all difficulties were removed, and the Government 
 was free to deal with Liberalism, unembarrassed by 
 the possibility of a flank attack from the clerical side. 
 
 At least, so men thought, but they had forgotten 
 the solitary of La Chenaie. 
 
 Matters went on smoothly enough during the 
 three months following the circular of Cardinal de 
 Latil, and the ministers were beginning to congratu- 
 late themselves on the success of their manoeuvre, 
 when suddenly, in February 1829, a book appeared, 
 which at once changed the whole aspect of affairs. 
 It was called, Des progres de la Be" volution et de la 
 Guerre contre VEglise. 
 
THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 129 
 
 In this work Lamennais boldly separated the 
 cause of Catholicism from that of the Monarchy and, 
 incidentally, from that of the Jesuits, who had been 
 most severely dealt with in the ordinances of June. 
 But, in doing this, he in no way identified himself 
 with the revolutionary movement. Eoyalty, it is 
 true, had abandoned the Church to its fate, so now 
 Catholics must leave the monarch and his supporters 
 to fight their own battles ; but they could look back 
 in fond remembrance to ' the time when Providence 
 recalled from exile the family of our ancient kings.' 
 So, too, the Jesuits were incapable of dealing with 
 modern society, and it would be fatal to the Catholic 
 cause if it were thought tliat theirs was essentially 
 bound up with it ; but it should not be forgotten 
 that the attack on them was in some measure 
 inspired by hostility to religion, and therefore 
 Christians should have nothing to do with it. 
 
 Turning, in the opening pages of his book, to the 
 actual situation, he briefly states the object of the 
 task which he has undertaken : ' We demand for 
 the Catholic Church the liberty promised by the 
 Charter to all religions ; the liberty which is enjoyed 
 by Protestants and Jews, and which would be 
 guaranteed to the followers of Mahomet or of 
 Buddha if any of them existed in France. . . . We 
 demand liberty of conscience, liberty of the press, 
 liberty of education— in a word, what the Belgians 
 have demanded of a persecuting Government.' 
 
 Having thus brought home to his readers the 
 very practical and immediate bearing of his work, 
 
130 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 the author plunges into an historical analysis of the 
 relations between Church and State, and he con- 
 cludes that Christianity brought liberty into the 
 world with the creation of an independent spiritual 
 power ; that Louis XIV. proclaimed despotism, 
 and brought society back to the point at which 
 Christianity found it : whence the Revolution. But 
 Christianity has thoroughly saturated the popula- 
 tion of Catholic countries : Mens agitat mole?n, and 
 it is this which has produced the war between the 
 people and those in authority. 
 
 Must we, then, ally ourselves with the Revolution ? 
 By no means. Liberalism, in deifying individualism, 
 must eventually find itself placed between despotism 
 (Hobbes) and anarchy ; for it is impossible, on its 
 accepted principles, to decide what form of Govern- 
 ment is legitimate. In a word : ' To ally ourselves 
 to liberalism, while it remains under the influence 
 of the theories which now characterise it, would be 
 to ally ourselves to anarchy itself — that is to say, to 
 an opinion which has no power but to destroy. . . . 
 While, to identify ourselves with authority, in the 
 form it has assumed under the influence of godless 
 maxims, which free it from every rule and all 
 dependence, would be to lean on that which is falling, 
 on a thing which, henceforward, no mortal power can 
 save, and to alienate the people from religion by 
 sacrificing, to a few men hopelessly blinded, their 
 holiest rights and their legitimate future.' 
 
 Therefore priests and laymen should work to 
 make the Church an independent force, resting on 
 
THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 131 
 
 its own traditions, which, trusting in its own strength, 
 can quietly await the catastrophe, and then, seizing 
 its opportunity, step in and save the world. ' What- 
 ever men may do, there are two needs which demand 
 satisfaction, and which are inherent in human 
 nature : the need of common doctrines, which form 
 the society of minds, and the "need for each mind of 
 developing its particular activity.' 
 
 But this book will be better understood through 
 the events which followed its publication than by a 
 detailed analysis of the contents of its pages. Before 
 turning, however, to the consideration of these, there 
 is one fact of considerable interest and importance 
 which must not be passed over. 
 
 M. Lafitte has pointed out in the earlier of the 
 articles quoted above, that Lamennais here commits 
 himself to Comte's classification of the sciences, 
 which he arranges in the following order : ' Mathe- 
 matics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology 
 . . . which he justifies on the principle of the pre- 
 ponderance of reason and the growth of complication' 
 It will be observed that there is one notable excep- 
 tion, sociology. This may perhaps be accounted for 
 on the ground that he had not yet sufficiently made 
 up his mind to feel justified in committing himself 
 thus far in public, or by a desire to avoid shocking 
 the preconceived opinions of the majority of his 
 readers; for he had already, as we have seen, 
 expressed himself in a letter as holding the opinion 
 that society could become the subject of a science 
 when he spoke of ' ideas, universally prevalent, whose 
 
132 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 action can be calculated, as in the material world that 
 of physical forces.' 
 
 It is needless to say that this declaration of war 
 from the pen of the Abbe de Lamennais fell like a 
 thunderbolt on the ministerial and politico-ecclesias- 
 tical world. The state of things was described in a 
 letter to the author by M. Waille, the editor of the 
 Memorial Catholique : — 
 
 It is difficult to describe, Monsieur l'Abbe, the effect 
 produced by your last work. The diplomatic body combin- 
 ing together to demand, of all the Courts, the provocation of 
 its condemnation at Bome ; the bishops hastening to Paris, 
 as if their dioceses were on fire ; the Archbishop of Paris 
 fulminating, the others getting ready to do so ; the terror 
 of the Nuncio himself; the humiliation and irritation of the 
 Jesuits and their friends, who, out of spite, have renounced 
 what they hitherto admitted of the doctrine of general con- 
 sent, &c, &c. . . . Nevertheless the revolution continues on 
 its way ; the Capuchins are being turned out of Marseilles, 
 in the Chamber a motion has been brought in to banish 
 those congregations of men which have up to now been con- 
 sidered as authorised by the law. They are thinking of 
 ordering the J[esuits] to leave the kingdom. Mgr. Feutrier 
 permits the bishops to pray for the Pope. Shall I go on with 
 this enumeration of insults — on the one hand, persecution, 
 on the other, servility ? 
 
 We can imagine the effect of such news on the 
 vivid imagination of Feli de Lamennais. His com- 
 bative feelings were thoroughly aroused when he 
 heard that the Archbishop of Paris had issued a pas- 
 toral letter against him, for this event followed almost 
 immediately on another, with which he had become 
 
THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 133 
 
 acquainted through the newspapers, the death of 
 Leo XII. 
 
 It was while he was still in a state of violent agi- 
 tation, caused by this double blow, that he wrote to 
 Madame de Senfft on February 28, 1829 :— ' Yes, the 
 death of Leo XII. is a great calamity ; I deeply feel 
 his loss. However, permit me to say it, I cannot re- 
 gret the happiness and peace I should, without doubt, 
 have found with him. ... It has been God's will 
 that I should remain here ; I become every day more 
 and more convinced of it. To work, to defend the 
 Truth ... to suffer for it, such is my lot. . . . The 
 Archbishop of Paris has jtjst attacked me in a pas- 
 toral ; he would not have dared to do it had the Pope 
 still been living. No doubt other bishops will follow 
 the example of this Court prelate, and not one of them 
 will say anything on the other side ; so I shall speak 
 myself.' 
 
 This resolution was followed by the writing of two 
 letters in reply to the archbishop, and on April 28 
 he described the result to M, de Senfft : ' As you 
 have seen, I have cut matters short with the Arch- 
 bisI=top~of Paris. He admitted — and I believe him— 
 that he "had not read my book." They say that 
 his - only object in publishing the pastoral was to get 
 the cordon bleu at Pentecost.' 
 
 In the same letter there is an explanation on the 
 Jesuits, who were naturally very indignant at his con- 
 temptuous treatment of them, and one of whom had 
 written to M. de Senfft, laying stress on the fact that 
 Pius VII. had seen fit to restore the order without 
 
I 34 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 changing anything in its constitutions, but saying 
 nothing of the contrary action of Clement XIV., who 
 had suppressed it in the eighteenth century. M. de 
 Senfft had forwarded this letter to Lamennais, who 
 was himself in correspondence with a member of the 
 order, and who now enclosed a note which he asked 
 his Austrian friend to forward, when read, to his 
 Jesuit correspondent, and he added : — 
 
 Thirty or forty pages would have been necessary for the 
 clear expression of my meaning. The more I think of it, 
 the more strongly I become convinced that, without great 
 changes in the spirit and in the organisation of the order, it 
 is impossible for it to live ; within half a century it will be 
 once more suppressed by the Holy See. I do not deny that 
 it was impiety which overthrew it the first time ; but it was 
 not impiety alone, for this would have been powerless had 
 it not been supported by a very wide-spread opinion which 
 has grown up again during the last fourteen years, and is 
 increasing every day. When the J . . . fell, Europe was 
 tired of them. Those who wish truly to serve them should 
 recognise this, and try to get them to see it themselves ; blind 
 enthusiasm can but hasten their destruction. Their true 
 friends are those who tell them the truth. May they ac- 
 knowledge this, and frankly admit that there is much in 
 them which might be reformed, and that on such a reform, 
 now more necessary and more pressing than ever, depends 
 their existence in the future ! They are, nearly all of them, 
 so convinced of the perfection of their institution, that it 
 seems like a sort of fascination. For my part, I know 
 nothing perfect in this kind but the Church. All else is 
 man, and participates in his infirmity. 
 
 In France the opposition to the work among the 
 official classes and their supporters was almost uni- 
 versal. M. Eoussel speaks of a bishop who wrote a 
 
THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 135 
 
 private letter condemning the book, but who, on his 
 opinion being made public, took the trouble to read 
 it, and was sorry for what he had said. 
 
 But news from other countries was more consol- 
 ing to the author. In July he received a letter from 
 Belgium, in which the writer said : — 
 
 Last winter I resisted the temptation of writing to you. 
 . . . But an opportunity now offers itself; the Sovereign 
 Pontiff, the Congregation of the Index, has just given a fit- 
 ting answer to the French Government. Allow me to offer 
 you my sincerest congratulations ; it is a triumph for all who 
 share your opinions. For my part I must thank you per- 
 sonally. I owe to your work repose of mind and peace of 
 conscience. A Catholic, strong in fa"ith, I was a Liberal in 
 politics, while nearly all the Catholics I knew spoke of the 
 interests of throne and altar as inseparable, and I saw that 
 incredulity was almost always bound up with Liberalism. 
 The contradiction was for me the source of painful question- 
 ings and lively misgivings in my confessions, and yet I could 
 not bring myself to look on the peoples as mere flocks legiti- 
 mately given over as a prey to the crook of an incapable 
 shepherd, or to the knife of a butcher. Your book, sir, ap- 
 peared, and was, for me, as a great light which suddenly lit 
 up those dark places where I had been groping for so long. 
 I saw the truth, and I threw myself eagerly on the treasure 
 so long desired. I seized it ; I made it mine, and since then, 
 Papist, Ultramontane, I have found the calm tranquillity 
 which I had lost. For this, sir, accept my sincerest thanks. 
 Your book has caused a great sensation in this country ; 
 three editions have been sold out ; our old Flemish blood 
 was stirred as we recognised the principles which guided our 
 fathers in their long struggle against despotism. 
 
 Indeed, the assurances which he received from 
 different quarters were sufficient to convince the 
 
136 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 author that the shaft had struck home, and he could 
 afford to laugh at the hostile attitude of those 
 against whom he had directed it. On the other 
 hand, his new departure necessarily involved a 
 political separation from many of those who had 
 been his closest allies in the past, but who were not 
 absolutely dominated, as he was, by the religious 
 principle. 
 
 M. de Vitrolles, for instance, looked on the book 
 as indicating a complete change of opinion. In May 
 he wrote to Lamennais : — 
 
 Was it not you who told me that a man was what 
 society had made him ; that he owed to it everything, even 
 his thought, his speech ? . . . Do you then mean, by the 
 ' development of the principle of liberty,' the restricting as 
 much as possible of this sacrifice of natural independence. 
 Do you think that, with us, too much weight is given to 
 the social side of things ? Diminish, if you can, the 
 religious and the political yoke, and you will soon have 
 made an end of France and of society itself. You are 
 impressed by the abuses of authority : what would you 
 think of those of the opposite principle? What sort of 
 men has your imagination created — disinterested, devoid of 
 passion ? . . . You see, I do not understand you . . . and 
 this poor despotism, in which I should have liked to 
 take refuge had anyone been able to establish it . . . My 
 friend, you wander alone with your pure and noble 
 imagination. Your thought is of a very .high order, but 
 it is in the clouds, and far from our poor planet, whose 
 form and whose methods you will not change. Who has 
 pointed out more forcibly than ' you have that it is im- 
 possible, with impunity, to separate oneself from ideas 
 received and accepted by the generality of mankind ? . . . 
 My dear man, you are alone, you will be understood by no 
 
THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 137 
 
 one. This comes of living for years together a solitary at 
 La ChSnaie ! The world uses up mental energy ; it holds 
 all at a level, low enough in the scale of ideas ; but solitude 
 leads us, little by little, to an eccentricity which in its turn 
 has its disadvantages and its dangers. 
 
 Thus Lamennais was misunderstood even by his 
 most intimate friends. There is evidence in his cor- 
 respondence of considerable irritation and resentment 
 at the way in which his suggestions were received by 
 many from whom he had expected sympathy and 
 support ; but fortunately there was other work 
 before him, which prevented him from dwelling too 
 exclusively on matters unpalatable to one of his 
 nervous and impressionable temperament. 
 
 Mention has already been made of his agreement 
 with the Abbes Gerbet and de Salinis to found a 
 school for the defence of the Catholic faith, and the 
 explaining of it to the modern world. For the 
 carrying out of their plan something of the nature 
 of a religious order was necessary, and in this the 
 organising powers of the Abbe Jean were not to be 
 despised. 
 
 This indefatigable priest had hitherto, as we have 
 seen, devoted the greater part of his energies to the 
 foundation and development of his Brothers of Chris- 
 tian Instruction ; he was in 1827 called upon to take 
 part in a work which was more far-reaching in its 
 object. One of the first steps in the carrying out of 
 the scheme has been pictures^ lely described by an 
 eye-witness, M. Houet, the late Superior of the 
 Oratory of Eennes. 
 
138 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 Forty years ago, at Vitre\ in 1827, I was concluding 
 my studies at the seminary of that town. One day an 
 ecclesiastic, small, thin, with a sunburnt complexion, quick 
 of eye, with forehead broad and high, already deeply fur- 
 rowed, appeared in the refectory. His unwonted presence 
 drew the attention of masters and pupils, but especially of 
 the former, who seemed as surprised as they were honoured 
 by such a visit. This priest was the brother of the cele- 
 brated author of the 'Essay on Indifference,' then at the 
 height of his glory. A man of action, he had recently 
 founded a society of priests for the needs of the diocese. 
 He had a private interview with the principal professor of 
 the establishment, and some months afterwards that pro- 
 fessor with two of his pupils joined the congregation of 
 M. de Lamennais. I was one of those pupils. 
 
 Thus was formed, as a national institution, the 
 celebrated Society of St. Peter, destined to become a 
 centre of Ultramontane and Mennaisian propaganda. 
 
 While the Abbe Jean was using his influence with 
 the seminaries, Gerbet and Feli himself exerted 
 themselves by correspondence to the gaining of 
 recruits to the movement. Their efforts were 
 successful, and a band of devoted disciples gathered 
 round the master. 
 
 The main body of the community was established 
 at Malestroit, where aspirants to the priesthood 
 were prepared for the moral and intellectual struggle 
 which was before them by men like the Abbes Kohr- 
 bacher and Blanc. But the chief interest centres at 
 La Chenaie, where Lamennais, who had been elected 
 Superior-General, gathered round himself a few 
 young men whose rarer qualities pointed to a brilliant 
 future. 
 
THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 139 
 
 It would be difficult to imagine anything more 
 fascinating than that life of piety, study and recrea- 
 tion which marked these days of quiet preparation 
 in the little house surrounded by woods in the wilds 
 of Brittany. It has been described for us by the 
 immortal pen of Maurice de Guerin, who joined the 
 community at a later date. 
 
 In December 1832 he wrote to his father : — 
 
 I left Paris ... on Wednesday. ... I had met there 
 M. Jean de L., the brother of M. Peli, and hoped I should 
 have been able to travel with him, but he advised me to go 
 alone, as his business would detain him indefinitely in 
 Paris. ... I arrived at Eennes on Friday evening, and was 
 put up at a house of the missionaries, founded by M. Jean ; 
 next day I got as far as Dinan with the post — that is to say, 
 within two leagues of La Chenaie. There I was fortunate 
 enough to meet one of my fellow disciples, and we went on 
 together. 
 
 M. Peli received me like a good father, and I embraced 
 him with the affection of a child, and with an emotion 
 which you can understand. MM. Gerbet and . . . also 
 received me kindly. Next day I began a little retreat of 
 three days which has just come to an end. I sorely needed 
 this lustral water. Our mode of life is very pleasant. We 
 get up at five (I am sure that they will laugh at my 
 laziness when they find it out) ; then there is prayer, with 
 meditation or reading ; dinner at twelve ; supper at eight, 
 and at nine or ten, bed. Such is our day. Our recreations 
 are spent in walks in the garden or the woods, stick in 
 hand. . . . There is another new-comer besides myself. . . . 
 We shall be four in all, and I do not think the house could 
 hold much more. 
 
 We are surrounded . . . and, as it were, stifled by the 
 woods ; the uneven nesses of the ground are so slight that 
 it is almost a plain, so that it is a rare thing to come on a 
 
140 THE ABBE BE LAMENNAIS 
 
 good view, and when we do so, we see only that immense 
 uniformity which characterises the surface of forests. . . . 
 To the west of the house is a pond shut in between two 
 woods which border it with overhanging trees. They say 
 that in summer it is charming. . . . The house itself is 
 crowned with a sharply angular roof which covers the 
 attics. It is white . . . .and can be seen through the 
 woods. The chapel is in front, at the bottom of the 
 garden ; it is quite small and simple, and suitable to the 
 solitude of the place. There is a low Mass there on 
 Sundays and feast days, as the parish is a long way off. 
 The garden is vast, well kept, and cut through by sandy 
 walks, some of them bordered by evergreens. Half of it 
 goes round the house to the left, and is separated from the 
 other half by a large terrace planted with lime trees. . . . 
 On the north side, corresponding to this garden, is a yard 
 surrounded by farm buildings, whence one can hear the 
 crowing of the cocks and the quacking of the ducks, which 
 we can see from time to time. . . . 
 
 So far I have heard nothing of my work ; M. Feli has 
 put off speaking to me of it till after my retreat, which comes 
 to an end to-day. I had forgotten to tell you that he is my 
 disentangler, my plucker out, the holder of my secrets. It 
 is such a short time since I arrived that my details have 
 necessarily been of the external, general kind ; as we get on 
 they will become more subtle, more personal, more inter- 
 esting. My interviews with M. Feli have not been long, on 
 account of the meditation involved in my retreat. To- 
 morrow we are to have a serious talk. Do you know what 
 was the subject of our first conversation ? ' What sort of 
 weather have you usually in your part of the country? ' was 
 the first question ; and then he asked me about my travelling 
 companions, my age, the high tide at St. Malo, Calderon, 
 how to catch oysters, Catholic poetry, Hugo, the principal 
 kinds of fish to be found on the coast of Brittany. . . . The 
 great man is small, slender, pale, with grey eyes, an oblong 
 head, a nose broad and long, a forehead deeply furrowed 
 
THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 141 
 
 with lines which come down between the eyebrows to the 
 root of the nose ; dressed from head to foot in coarse grey 
 cloth. He walks up and down his room at such a pace as 
 to tire my young legs, and when we go out for a stroll, he 
 walks on in front, wearing on his head an old battered 
 straw hat. 
 
 A few days later he wrote to his sister, Eugenie 
 de Guerin : — 
 
 I am getting used to the desert . . . my habits are 
 conforming themselves to my new life, and my eyes are 
 already accustomed to the thorny moors and the dull brown 
 of the forests. There must be in me a considerable fund of 
 sympathy that I should have been able so quickly to get 
 to like these uncouth steppes, and the dark belt of woods 
 which surrounds us. La Chenaie is fruly a hermitage in the 
 midst of solitude, and one can say, without exaggeration, 
 that one hears there only the sighing of the wind in the 
 branches of the trees, and that nothing is seen to pass but 
 the clouds. Often, in spite of habit, we wonder at our 
 profound isolation, and ask ourselves how such silence can 
 be. In this way work becomes a need, an absolute necessity. 
 Thought cannot gambol in this uninviting country, it is 
 forced to stay at home and to turn in upon itself, for contact 
 with the outer world would wound it. 
 
 All this means that I have got to work, and that the 
 work is serious and without interruption. M. Feli has set 
 me to do modern languages, beginning with Italian, and 
 Catholic philosophy, with the history of philosophy. I am 
 glad of an opportunity of learning modern languages ; they 
 are an important vehicle of the sciences. Of dead languages 
 I am learning only Greek. I know a little already, which 
 will help me over the first difficulties. You see that I 
 am in the first beginnings of an immense work . . .-but 
 we have so great a general at our head that I feel full 
 of confidence, and as it were certain of victory. 
 
 There are now four of us young men. Each of us has a 
 
142 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 bedroom, but as there is a dearth of fire-places, we meet 
 together for work in a common room, round a good fire. 
 I have, without much difficulty, got accustomed to getting 
 up at five o'clock ; I even find that I sleep the better for it. 
 I love our little chapel at the bottom of the garden. We go 
 there the first thing in the morning to serve or to hear Mass. 
 Then comes breakfast, with butter and bread, which we toast 
 to make it more palatable ; butter always plays an important 
 part in our meals. Dinner is solid, with coffee and liqueurs 
 when there are visitors, and it is seasoned by a running fire 
 of anecdotes and witticisms, most of which come from 
 M. Feli. Some of his sayings are charming, and he is 
 continually going off into flights at once lively, pointed, and 
 brilliant. In this way he finds an outlet for his genius when 
 he is not at work ; he ceases to be sublime and becomes 
 delightful. M. Gerbet is also pretty good at telling stories, 
 but he is usually more serious than M. Feli. . . . 
 
 I have seen M. Feli in the sitting room. . . . [He] lets 
 you say your rosary without interrupting you ; then, when 
 you have said ' I have done,' he begins to speak words 
 grave, deep, luminous, full of unction. His moral con- 
 versation, like his books of devotion, is filled with Holy 
 Scripture, marvellously interwoven with his language. It 
 lends to it a peculiar sweetness. He loves us as a father, and 
 addresses each of us as ' My son.' Yesterday, when the last 
 of us arrived, he seemed deeply touched. ' Our little family 
 is increasing,' he said to me, and he embraced me tenderly. 
 We learn more from conversation than from books. In a 
 few words he suggests points of view which are invaluable in 
 their bearing on different branches of knowledge. Every- 
 thing that falls from him elevates and warms the soul ; one 
 feels the presence of genius. 
 
 Such was the impression made on Maurice de 
 Guerin by the daily routine at La Chenaie, such were 
 his thoughts on the central figure of that small 
 community. It would be impossible to imagine 
 
THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 143 
 
 anything more vivid than the picture which is 
 conveyed to us by these simple descriptions. We 
 can almost see the various actors as each pursues his 
 .allotted course. We feel that we are in the presence 
 of a deep reality when he describes to us a scene in 
 the woods which surrounded La Chemaie : — 
 
 A strong north wind rolled over the forest — the trees 
 were bent and writhed furiously at every blast. We saw 
 through the branches black fantastic masses of cloud flying 
 along, and seeming to touch the tops of the trees. From time 
 to time, breaking through some momentary opening in the 
 great sombre veil, a ray of sun flashed like lightning into the 
 bosom of the forest. These fitful streams of light gave to 
 the depths, so majestic in their shadow, an appearance of 
 something wild and strange, like a smile on the lips of 
 the dead. 
 
 But, as we turn over the pages of the Journal or 
 of the correspondence, we become gradually aware of 
 the fact that we are not in presence of nature alone. 
 Maurice may love to wander in the woods, or to loiter 
 on some mossy bank, soothed into dreamy reverie by 
 the soft murmurings from the teeming incidents 
 of forest life, but we feel that in his solitude he is 
 never alone, that he is always, in thought at least, 
 under the influence of a powerful personality : for had 
 he not owned himself a disciple of the Abbe Felicite 
 de Lamennais ? 
 
 And, as it was with Guerin, so it was with those 
 who went before him. For we must remember that 
 the young poet did not join the community till 1832, 
 at a time when many things had happened of which, 
 as yet, nothing has been said, and when one at least 
 
144 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 of his most intimate followers was about to separate 
 himself for ever from the master, on the horizon of 
 whose career the dark clouds of gloomy tragedy were 
 already beginning to gather. 
 
 At the period we have reached none of these 
 things had come to pass, and the future seemed 
 pregnant with great things to the first band of neo- 
 phytes who ranged themselves under the banner of 
 the solitary of La Chdnaie. 
 
 It is a curious fact, characteristic of the vivid 
 contrasts so often seen in the course of his stormy 
 career, that at this moment, as we stand as it were 
 trembling on the threshold of a movement which will 
 lead us we know not whither, the great genius in 
 whose mind the thing is being evolved suddenly lets 
 fall from his pen a work which breathes, above all 
 things, a spirit of tender pathos and deep sympathy 
 with his fellow-men, very far removed from what the 
 outward arrangement of events might have led us to 
 expect. 
 
 In January 1828 he had lost his father, M. de 
 Lamennais, and in the summer of 1829 death had 
 snatched away from him his uncle Des Saudrais, who 
 had done so much for him in his childhood and in 
 the days of his first waking into consciousness in the 
 world of literature. About this last he had written : 
 ' I have just lost my poor uncle, who has been to us 
 a second father. The two brothers on the same day 
 married two sisters ; they are together now. So . . . 
 all things pass away, so all things die ! Beati mortui 
 qui in Domino moriuntur ! ' 
 
THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 145 
 
 And thus it happened that on November 1 of this 
 year 1829, depressed in mind and worn out in body, 
 he had retired to his room, not perhaps without 
 having reminded his young disciples of the sorrowful 
 commemoration ordained by the Church to take 
 place on the following day. . The scene has been 
 graphically described by his nephew Blaize : — 
 
 It was in 1829, on the evening of the Feast of All Saints. 
 We were all together in the drawing-room of that old 
 granite house teeming with so many memories. M. Lorin, 
 the maternal ancestor of' M. de Lamennais, painted in his 
 judge's robes, looked down at us gravely and kindly. 
 Madame Lorin, dressed in yellow damask sprinkled with 
 little flowers, and in a velvet 'cloak trimmed with fur, her 
 hands in her muff, softly smiled at us. But time had 
 passed over those dear faces, and had left but a shade of 
 sadness. My grandfather and my grandmother Lamen- 
 nais, many of their children and their grandchildren, my 
 great uncle Des Saudrais and his devoted wife, had lived in 
 this house, and had found in it a little rest and happiness. 
 On such a day they too had thought of their dead, and hoped 
 for them the joys of heaven. The autumn wind was carry- 
 ing along in clouds the yellowed leaves from the old oaks 
 which had seen so many generations pass away, and causin" 
 to vibrate the rows of slender needled twigs on the branches 
 of the pines, which rose like black phantoms in the darkness. 
 How many loved voices mingling with the rumours of the 
 night cried to us from the tomb ' llemember ! ' . . . 
 
 M. de Lamennais came into the room and read to us his 
 Hymn of the Dead : — 
 
 lis ont aussi passe sur cette terre, ils ont descendu le 
 fleuve du temps ; on entendit leurs voix sur ses bords, et puis 
 on n'entendit plus rien. Ou sont-ils ? Qui nous le dira ? 
 Heureux les morts qui meurent dans le Seigneur. 
 
 Pendant qu'ils passaicnt, mi He ombres vaines se pre- 
 
 h 
 
146 THE ABBE DE LAMENNA1S 
 
 senterent a leurs regards : le monde que le Christ a maudit 
 leur montra ses grandeurs, ses richesses, ses volupt^s ; ils le 
 virent, et soudain ils ne virent plus que l'eternite. Ou sont- 
 ils ? Qui nous le dira ? Heureux les morts qui meurent 
 dans le Seigneur. 
 
 Semblable a un rayon d'en haut, une croix dans le 
 lointain apparaissait pour guider leur course ; mais tous ne la 
 regardaient pas. Ou sont-ils ? Qui nous le dira ? Heureux 
 les morts qui meurent dans le Seigneur. 
 
 II y en avait qui disaient : Qu'est-ce que ces flots qui 
 nous emportent ? Y a-t-il quelque chose apres ce voyage 
 rapide ? Nous ne le savons pas, nul ne le sait. Et comme 
 ils disaient cela, les rives s'evanouissaient. Ou sont-ils? 
 Qui nous le dira? Heureux les morts qui meurent dans le 
 Seigneur. 
 
 II y en avait aussi qui semblaient dans un recueillement 
 profond ecouter une parole secrete, et puis, l'oeil fix6 sur le 
 couchant, tout a coup ils chantaient une aurore invisible et 
 un jour qui ne finit jamais. Ou sont-ils? Qui nous le dira? 
 Heureux les morts qui meurent dans le Seigneur. 
 
 Entratne pele-mele, jeunes et vieux, tous disparaissaient, 
 tels que le vaisseau que chasse la tempete. On compterait 
 plut6t les sables de la mer que le nombre de ceux qui se 
 hataient de passer. Ou sont-ils? Qui nous le dira? 
 Heureux les morts qui meurent dans le Seigneur. 
 
 Ceux qui les virent ont raconte" qu'une grande tristesse 
 etait dans leur cceur : l'angoisse soulevait leur poitrine, et, 
 comme fatigues du travail de vivre, levant les yeux au ciel, 
 ils pleuraient. Ou sont-ils ? Qui nous le dira ? Heureux 
 les morts qui meurent dans le Seigneur. 
 
 Des lieux inconnus ou le fleuve se perd, deux voix s'ele- 
 vent incessamment. 
 
 L'une dit : Du fond de l'ablme j'ai cri£ vers vous, 
 Seigneur : Seigneur, 6coutez mes gemissements, pr&tez 
 l'oreille a ma priere. Si vous scrutez nos iniquites, qui 
 soutiendra votre regard ? Mais pres de vous est la mis^ri- 
 cordc et une redemption immense. 
 
THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 147 
 
 Et l'autre : Nous vous louons, 6 Dieu ! nous vous 
 benissons : Saint, saint, saint est le Seigneur Dieu des 
 Armees ! La terre et les cieux sont remplis de votre gloire. 
 
 Et nous aussi, nous irons la d'ou partent ces plaintes ou 
 ces chants de triomphe. Ou serons-nous? Qui nous le dira? 
 Heureux les morts qui meurent dans le Seigneur. 1 
 
 But the influence of the "powerful personality of 
 Felicito de Lamennais was not felt by those alone 
 who had the privilege of living with him at La Che- 
 naie. For many years a young Burgundian priest 
 had been following his career. Intending, on the 
 threshold of active life, to dedicate himself to the 
 
 1 They also have passed over the* earth, they have gone down the river 
 of time ; their voices were heard for a moment on the banks, and then 
 they were heard no more. Where are they ? Who can tell us ? Happy 
 are the dead who die in the Lord. 
 
 While they passed, thousands of shadowy phantoms beset them : the 
 world which Christ had cursed showed them its wealth, its pleasures, its 
 power ; they saw it, and suddenly they saw only eternity. Where are 
 they ? Who can tell us '? Happy are the dead who die in the Lord. 
 
 As a ray from on high, appeared a cross far off to guide them on their 
 way ; but all did not turn to it. Where are they ? Who can tell us ? 
 Happy are the dead who die in the Lord. 
 
 There were some who said : What are these floods which hurry us 
 along ? Is there anything after this rapid journey ? We do not know — 
 no man knows. And as they spoke the banks disappeared. Where are 
 they '? Who can tell us ? Happy are the dead who die in the Lord. 
 
 There were some again who seemed, wrapped in thought, to listen to a 
 secret word, and then looking towards the West all at once they began to 
 sing of an invisible dawn, and of a day which never ends. Where 
 are they ? Who can tell us ? Happy are the dead who die in the 
 Lord. 
 
 Drawn along pell-mell, young and old, all disappeared even as a vessel ' 
 driven before a storm. It would be easier to count the sand of the sea 
 than the number of those who were hurrying by. Where are they ? Who 
 can tell us ? Happy are the dead who die in the Lord. 
 
 Those who saw them have said that a great sadness was in their 
 hearts ; agony stirred their breasts, and, as if tired of the work of life, 
 raising their eyes to heaven, they wept. Where are they ? Who can tell 
 us ? Happy are the dead who die in the Lord. 
 
148 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 legal profession, this young man had studied law at 
 the FaculU of Dijon. There he had lost his faith, 
 and become a confirmed Liberal. The later develop- 
 ment of his mind had brought him back to the bosom 
 of the Catholic Church, and had determined his voca- 
 tion to the priesthood. But his Liberalism remained, 
 and with it a desire to found or take part in some 
 movement for the breaking down of that barrier of 
 ecclesiastical officialism which stood in the way of 
 the spiritual regeneration of the age in which he 
 lived. 
 
 He had heard much of the sayings and doings of 
 the Abbe" de Lamennais, but, on the whole, the im- 
 pression they produced in his mind was unfavourable. 
 To him the tendency of the great Catholic writer 
 was, on the one hand, towards that political despo- 
 tism which he hated, and, on the other, to the 
 undermining of those safeguards to liberty which 
 were contained, in germ at least, in the teaching of 
 the Church. 
 
 A story is quoted by Mgr. Eicard which aptly 
 illustrates his first judgment of Lamennais, and the 
 way in which his opinion came to be altered. 
 
 From the unknown places where the river is lost two voices are 
 continually rising. 
 
 One says : Out of the deep I have cried to theo, Lord ; Lord, hear 
 my groanings, give ear unto my prayer. If Thou takest count of our sins, 
 who can bear it ? But with Thee is mercy and boundless redemption. 
 
 And the other : We praise Thee, O God ! We bless Thee : Holy, holy, 
 holy is the Lord God of hosts ! Earth and the heavens are filled with Thy 
 glory. 
 
 And we also shall go there whence come. these cries of sorrow or songs 
 of triumph. Where shall we bo ? Who can tell us ? Happy are the 
 dead who die in the Lord. 
 
THE REVOLUTION OP JULY 1830 149 
 
 In 1826 he said of him : To be alone in the world 
 tvould be for him an infallible proof that lie was 
 right. 
 
 This was reported to Feli, who answered by send- 
 ing him his works, which he read or re-read till he 
 was won over to the cause. And his adherence was 
 a matter of no slight importance to the founders of 
 the Mennaisian School, for the young critic's name 
 was Henri Lacordaire. 
 
 As early as the spring of 1823 he had seen the 
 celebrated author, whose ' Essay on Indifference ' had 
 then just raised him to the front rank in literature, 
 at the same time making l;im the centre of a violent 
 controversy. Young Lacordaire had expected some- 
 thing striking, something visibly great, and he was 
 disappointed. ' He is a little, dried-up man,' he 
 wrote, ' with a thin, yellow face, simple in manners, 
 abrupt in speech, and full of his book. Nothing 
 reveals his genius. If you were to set M. de Lamen- 
 nais down in a gathering of ecclesiastics, with his 
 brown overcoat, his short breeches, and black silk 
 stockings, he would be taken for a parish sexton.' 
 
 But all this was changed when, in the early 
 months of 1830, he set out for La Chenaie. As he 
 approached the house he was overcome by a sudden 
 feeling of awe. ' Arrived at Dinan,' he wrote, ' I 
 plunged alone, by obscure footpaths, into the woods. 
 After asking my way once or twice, I suddenly found 
 myself before a house, dark and solitary, whose mys- 
 terious celebrity was disturbed by no sound. It was 
 La Chenaie.' And he went in. 
 
150 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 Lamennais greeted him warmly, rising and shaking 
 his hand ; he then sat down again and continued the 
 conversation which had been momentarily interrupted 
 by the new arrival. 
 
 As usually happened on such occasions, the master 
 spoke while the disciples hung on his words. Lacor- 
 daire, himself a thinker, and, above all things, a talker, 
 seems to have felt an instinctive objection to this 
 state of things, and even to have been somewhat 
 shocked at some of the opinions expressed, as notably 
 a philosophic exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity 
 which seemed to him heretical. But it was too late, 
 and he soon found himself absolutely subdued by the 
 extraordinary fascination of the place and of the 
 man. 
 
 Meanwhile, political events were hurrying on, and, 
 it is needless to say, that Lamennais followed them 
 closely. In the opening months of 1830 we find him, 
 in his correspondence, treating with scathing sarcasm 
 the steps by which M. de Polignac was slowly but 
 surely leading the monarchy to its doom. On 
 March 9, for instance, he wrote to Mme. Louise de 
 Senfft :— 
 
 While we are on the subject of fools and knaves, let us 
 speak of the ministers and the Chamber. . . . They will find 
 it difficult to live together. The question is whether the 
 deputies are to dismiss the ministers or the ministers the 
 deputies, for it seems certain that one or the other must 
 go ; and, as there is resistance on both sides, M. de Polignac 
 holding on, and identifying himself with royalty, it is pos- 
 sible that the struggle may become so intense as to bring on 
 what is vulgarly called a revolution. Certainly it is hard 
 
THE REVOLUTION OP JULY 1830 151 
 
 enough to see a way out of the difficulty, a fact which has 
 led M. Cottu to call loudly for a dictatorship, which means 
 some big devil of a man who comes, caring neither for laws 
 nor for constitutions, and throws a bucket of water over the 
 combatants. 
 
 And so he continues, in his letters, to delight and 
 sometimes to shock his friends by the mocking irony 
 of his descriptions of the dying monarchy, till sud- 
 denly he is brought to a stand by the occurrence of 
 the event which he has been predicting, but which, 
 from its precipitancy, seems to take him by surprise, 
 
 The Revolution of July 1830 accomplished its 
 object with comparatively little loss of life or pro- 
 perty. The king was allowed to escape, and order 
 was almost immediately restored in the capital. But 
 we can imagine the mingled feelings aroused in the 
 mind of anyone who, like Lamennais, living in a dis- 
 tant province, and in one of the wildest districts of 
 that province, heard the news from Paris chiefly 
 through the medium of vague rumours of street fight- 
 ing and general disorder. The accounts which reached 
 him seem to have somewhat frightened him, and this 
 gives a dramatic force to a letter which he wrote on ■• 
 August 6 to M. de Coriolis, while standing, as it 
 were, in uncertainty, hesitating, with his' hand on the 
 door which leads to the unknown : — 
 
 Men are seeking one another, my dear friend, and meet- 
 ing as soldiers after a battle. Ah ! You are alive ! Are you 
 not wounded ? Have you heard anything of such an one, or 
 of so and so ? I, for example, should like to ask you about 
 our Florentine friend, for I have heard nothing of him, nor 
 of B . Here, thank God, everything has gone off quietly, 
 
152 THE ABBE DE LAMEN^AIS 
 
 and, but for the colour of the flag, one would not notice any 
 change. God grant that this state of things may continue ! 
 The vanquished have in every way deserved their defeat, 
 and that defeat is beyond hope of recovery. It is desirable 
 that this opinion become universally prevalent, for false 
 hopes might do infinite harm. The time has come when 
 each man must seek his safety in the safety of all — that is to 
 say, in a general system of liberty. Liberty is the right 
 and possibility of defending oneself against any arbitrary 
 and oppressive will. It is to be hoped that this principle 
 may prevail in the Government which they are going to give 
 us, otherwise we shall fall into the power of a despotism 
 which will be the more violent that real strength will be 
 wanting to it. It is evident that the victors are already 
 divided amongst themselves : some of them, in their heart 
 of hearts, wish for the Republic pure and simple ; others 
 would like to see something like the despotism of Bonaparte. 
 If these last were to succeed in winning some important 
 points, war would begin to-morrow, and events would natu- 
 rally move on, as formerly happened in England, to perse- 
 cution, perhaps to proscription. "Who ever can see into the 
 future should then hope that the struggle between these two 
 parties may be made impossible by a system of institutions, 
 which makes of the parody of a king, who is to be given to 
 the nation, a simple manikin. If this is done, all those, who- 
 ever they may be, who have interests in common, can and 
 ought, if they have a grain of courage or of intelligence, to 
 organise themselves in singleness of purpose, publicly and 
 legally, for the defence of their interests. But if this is to 
 be done, people must not isolate themselves, shut themselves 
 up, so to speak, or mike it a matter of stupid, fatal honour 
 to be nothing and to take part in nothing. The strong man, 
 the man who does not allow himself to be overcome by illu- 
 sions, never abandons himself ; he turns his back on the 
 past and walks with raised head towards the future, that he 
 may take his place there. God grant that this may be 
 understood. 
 
THE REVOLUTION OF JULY 1830 153 
 
 On the same day, but probably at a later hour, 
 when the situation had more clearly denned itself in 
 his mind, he wrote to Mme. de Senfft :— ' The Duke 
 of Orleans is to receive ,the crown; it will weigh 
 heavily on his head. The greater number would 
 prefer a Republic frankly proclaimed, and I agree 
 with them.'' 
 
154 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 CHAPTEE VI 
 
 THE ' AVENIR ' 
 
 They will not hear you! And who would dare not to 
 hear you? After all, if it happened that they turned a 
 deaf ear to your petitions, that they met with refusal your 
 just demands, the law has provided for such a denial of 
 justice, as it has provided for public safety and the mainten- 
 ance, of order, by creating the National Guard. It calls on 
 you to enlist in it ; it confides to you the defence of your 
 own rights. If you are ever robbed of them . . . you will 
 have only yourselves to blame. 
 
 These are memorable words, and pregnant with 
 revolutionary meaning, yet my readers will be sur- 
 prised to hear that they were not uttered in the 
 tribune of the National Convention, and that they 
 were not spoken by any of the orators who took part 
 in the eventful struggles of '93 and '94. They merely 
 appeared one morning in October 1830 in the pages 
 of an ecclesiastical paper, and in an article by a 
 priest who had hitherto been chiefly known for his 
 reactionary sympathies. And this fact is not without 
 a certain interest, for the paper was called the Avenir, 
 and the writer was Felicite de Lamennais. 
 
 Adequately to appreciate the contemporary in- 
 fluence of an undertaking which was unique in the 
 history of journalism is, when we are separated by 
 
THE 'AVENIR' 155 
 
 considerably more than half a century from the events 
 which called for it, and the points of view which 
 gave practical value to it, well nigh . impossible. To 
 pore over the numbers of a daily paper, when they 
 have been collected, and perhaps grown mouldy on 
 the shelves of a library, is nQt the same thing as to 
 find them singly on one's breakfast table in the 
 morning, and to look forward with eager curiosity 
 and lively, perhaps passionate, interest to the 
 perusal of their contents. And yet, even at this 
 distance of time, it is not without a thrill of 
 emotion that we rise from a survey, however hasty, 
 pf the collected volumes -of the' Avenir, We feel as 
 we turn over these half-forgotten pages that we are 
 in the presence of an enthusiasm which is not of our 
 time, and of a boldness of human appreciation and 
 sympathy which few to-day would be willing to con- 
 cede to the average productions of the ecclesiastical 
 mind; for the Avenir was founded at a time which, 
 if it seemed pregnant with great things in the future, 
 was no less fraught with infinite danger to an insti- 
 tution which, like the Catholic Church, though 
 capable of indefinite expansion and adaptability, had 
 its roots in the past, and spoke not only to the present, 
 whether in time or place, but to every country and . 
 to every age. 
 
 The leaders of the movement thoroughly realised 
 this, and there is hardly a line of their writings 
 which does not bear traces of that principle so 
 boldly set forth in the pages of the great funda- 
 mental work of their master, Homo sum, humani 
 
156 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 nihil a me alienum puto. This it was which inspired 
 them, both in the choice of their motto, God and 
 Liberty, and in the carrying out of every step in the 
 undertaking. 
 
 The first number appeared on October 16, and 
 it opened with a masterly article from the pen of 
 Lamennais himself ; but it was not till the following 
 day that the paper gave an indication of its real 
 scope, and began to show itself in its true colours. 
 In that issue, the editors frankly committed them- 
 selves to a demand for a considerable extension 
 of the suffrage and frequent elections, as well as for 
 liberty, of speech, teaching, and opinion. All these 
 and the first of them in a more advanced form, 
 became typical of the policy of the journal. Every- 
 thing else flowed from them as a development called 
 for in the practical working of the scheme. 
 
 But this serious attitude was varied by occasional 
 sallies of a lighter sort, in which they bespattered 
 their more servile Catholic friends with unsparing 
 ridicule, and endeavoured to cause them to writhe 
 into activity under the well-directed lashings of a 
 scathing irony : — 
 
 Everything points to the fact [said a writer in the 
 issue of October 17] that religion should desire freedom. 
 But no doubt it will continue to stand at the palace gates. 
 One day the prince as he goes by will notice it, and will 
 say, ' God be praised ! there is still a remnant of faith in my 
 people.' Eeligion will bow respectfully, for the second 
 Majesty has deigned to speak before the first. The prince 
 will open his purse, but, remembering that etiquette forbids 
 him to give alms directly to God, he will raise his voice and 
 
THE 'AVENIR' 157 
 
 say, ' My Lord Cardinal, you are my almoner.' Eeligion 
 will bow still more reverently ; it will return to its deserted 
 basilicas, accompanied by the indifference of the people, but 
 with the smile and with the gold of Ctesar. 
 
 Then they assumed a more threatening attitude. 
 There is a refreshing boldness in an article by 
 Lamennais which appeared on October 18 : — 
 
 Truth [he says] is all-powerful. The only thing which 
 stands in its way is the support which material force is 
 trying to lend, to it; the very appearance of constraint in 
 the essentialiy free domain of conscience and of reason, the 
 brutal violence which does not respect the sanctuary of the 
 soul, into which God alone has a right to enter. No man 
 owes any account of his faith to^ human power, and the 
 contrary maxim, directly opposed to Catholicism, whose 
 foundations it undermines, has, whenever it has appeared in 
 the world, been fruitful in blood-stained strife, calamities, 
 and crimes without number ; it has wrung from hell its 
 Henry VIII.s and its Dukes of Alba. But will the State 
 try to use this principle against the Church ? No power 
 to-day is strong enough to attempt such a thing with any 
 hope of success. Such an undertaking would bring down 
 upon it the immense body of the Catholics and all those 
 who, without belonging to that body, sincerely wish for 
 liberty. The time for violence has passed away ; there are 
 rights which henceforward cannot be attacked with im- 
 punity ; whoever dares to touch them will be crushed by 
 them. 
 
 Then, turning to his Catholic readers, he exhorts 
 them to remember the dignity of their profession, 
 and points out the disastrous consequences of the 
 establishment of the Church : — 
 
 Understand what follows inevitably from the state of 
 bondage in which she is held ; calculate, if you can, the 
 
158 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 future results of the prolongation of a state of things which 
 has already been so fruitful in evil : religion administered as 
 are the customs or the octroi, the priesthood degraded, 
 discipline ruined, teaching oppressed. ... 
 
 And he concluded with a touching appeal to the 
 French clergy :— <- 
 
 Ministers of One who was born in a manger and who 
 died upon a cross, return to your primitive state, steep your- 
 selves voluntarily in poverty and suffering, and the word of 
 a poor and suffering God will become fruitful on your lips. 
 Without any other support than that divine word, go forth 
 as the twelve fishermen into the midst of the peoples and 
 begin once more the conquest of the world. Christianity is 
 about to enter on another era of triumph and of glory. 
 Messengers of hope, se:e on the horizon the precursory signs 
 of the rising of the star, and send forth, over the ruins of 
 empires and the remains of all that is subject to the law of 
 death, the song of life. 
 
 And so things went on. Hardly a day went by 
 without some fresh indication that the movement 
 would lead to something beyond mere words, some- 
 thing gratifying to the true friends of religion and of 
 liberty, goading to the half-hearted and dangerous to 
 those in power. ' It is time,' said the editors on one 
 occasion, ' it is time that twenty millions of French- 
 men should cease to be oppressed by a system of 
 jealous watchfulness. ... If the idea has come into 
 anyone's head, he will soon learn that it is not easy 
 to impose fetters upon us ; he will learn what we are 
 and what we can do.' And again : < We will render 
 to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, provided that 
 we are allowed to render freely to God the things 
 that are God's.' 
 
THE 'AVENIR' 159 
 
 This being their general attitude, we are not 
 surprised to find that when the Government, taking 
 advantage of the wave of anti-clericalism which had 
 had so much to do with the revolution of July, pro- 
 posed to cut down the salaries of the clergy, the 
 writers in the Avenir were in no way dismayed. A 
 Protestant paper had committed itself to praise of 
 the Government, and had triumphantly welcomed 
 this striking sign of the approaching doom of the 
 Catholic Church in France. This nettled the editors 
 of the Catholic paper, who reminded their Protestant 
 contemporary that they had already demanded the 
 absolute suppression of the budget the clerge", and they 
 even went so far as to suggest that the principles of 
 the Reformation should be supported by the State, 
 as they would, from the circumstances of their origin, 
 be well suited to that mode of treatment. 
 
 Nor does it offer matter for surprise that, within 
 a fortnight of its foundation, the fame of the Avenir 
 should have crossed the borders of France, and 
 should even have reached the ears of a young French 
 Catholic who, burning with an unsatisfied love for 
 religion and liberty, had gone on a pilgrimage to 
 Ireland to visit the hero of Catholic cmancijmtion. 
 
 Charles de Montalembert was disappointed by his 
 personal interview with the great Irish leader, who 
 does not seem to have taken him seriously, thinking, 
 no doubt, that he was merely a young French noble- 
 man come to Ireland on a tour of pleasure, and who, 
 instead of talcing him into his study to talk over the 
 destinies of nations and of religion, showed him into 
 
160 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 a room full of young people, who were occupied in 
 lulling time with frivolous amusements. But this 
 humiliating reception in no way weakened the fasci- 
 nation which drew him both to the cause and to the 
 man. 
 
 We can imagine, then, the enthusiasm with 
 which he read the first numbers of the Avenir, 
 which convinced him that there was a possibility of 
 something similar in his own country. He wrote at 
 once to Lamennais, asking to be allowed to take part 
 in his labours, and his offer was promptly accepted. 
 
 Montalembert joined the staff of the Avenir at a 
 time when the progress of the struggle was beginning 
 to produce its natural effect on the writers, and his 
 co-operation, on the whole, had a softening influence 
 on them. There is in everything that comes from 
 his pen an appearance of quiet conviction and of 
 lofty, chivalrous sentiment which in the others, not 
 excluding Lacordaire, is thrown into the background 
 by the practical, combative, and almost revolutionary 
 tone they have been forced to assume. An instance 
 of this may be seen in an article of his, which 
 traverses ground already gone over by Lamennais. 
 The latter, in the first number, had boldly proclaimed 
 the necessity of an absolute break with the past, and 
 we already know, from his correspondence, how little 
 sympathy he had with that past. ' The vanquished 
 have, in every way, deserved their defeat, &c.' This, 
 no doubt, was in agreement with the general policy 
 of the Avenir, to which Montalembert had given his 
 adherence ; but with him this turning away from the 
 
THE ' AVENIR' 161 
 
 past was robbed of much of its bitterness through 
 his avowed sympathy with those who disagreed with 
 him. The contrast is abundantly evident in a 
 passage from an article which appeared on March C, 
 1831, quoted by Madame Craven. It is entitled, 
 A ceux qui aime nt ce qui jut. He says : — 
 
 Living apart from public life, from the struggles which 
 have absorbed your lives, from the affections which have 
 gained possession of your souls, we do not pledge ourselves to 
 you as participating in your political beliefs. But we say it 
 in all simplicity and in good faith. If you realised the depth 
 of our respect for unfortunate loves, of our veneration for 
 the enduring enthusiasm of your fidelity, and, above all, of 
 our sympathy for the faith which is 'common to all of us, 
 you would regret the disagreement which separates us ; you 
 would recognise in us the children of the same Father, 
 Christians who groan at the thought of not being able to 
 unite with other Christians in all their thoughts, and who 
 desire to join all together in a unity which is higher than 
 that which can be dissolved by the accidents of the world. 
 
 We do not feel this sympathy for the disappointment of 
 courtiers, the spite of officials, the mortifications of self-love 
 or of ambition. . . . But we feel it deeply, intensely, for the 
 disinterested longings of those provincial royalists, of those 
 rural populations, who have never seen the Court. . . . 
 
 Dominated by a thought which is higher than thrones, 
 looking towards a future which God permits us partially to 
 see, we do not partake of their sorrow, but we are touched 
 by it ; we do not live in their hopes, their memories, but we 
 bow ourselves reverently before their devotion. For where 
 devotion is, there is faitli ; and where faith is, there is the 
 breath of God. 
 
 This, I think, will be sufficient to give my readers 
 some idea of the new-comor ; and it is not without 
 
 M 
 
162 THE ABBE DE LAMENNA1S 
 
 reason that I have turned aside to introduce him, for 
 in the short and brilliant though stormy career of the 
 Avenir, amidst many names which call for our respect 
 and sympathy, such as those of Gerbet and De Coux, 
 there are three which stand prominent, they are : 
 Lamennais, Lacordaire, and Montalembert. 
 
 The first object of the paper, as seen in the corre- 
 spondence of Lamennais, and as we might surmise 
 from the letter quoted at the end of the last chapter, 
 was simply to defend Catholic interests in the pre- 
 vailing anarchy and uncertainty of opinion. But as 
 time went on the editors found themselves driven to 
 a more aggressive attitude, and forced to ally them- 
 selves with interests which, though fundamentally 
 in agreement with them, and cordially uniting with 
 them in their hatred of the attempted reaction 
 connected with the pseudo-royalistic regime of Louis 
 Philippe, were still, superficially at least, not essen- 
 tially Catholic. 
 
 The general lines of this policy were laid down 
 by Lamennais in an article published on October 30, 
 1830. After speaking generally of the supposed 
 difficulties of such an alliance, he illustrates the 
 possibility of it by a very pregnant simile. He 
 says : — 
 
 Imagine to yourselves a house occupied in its different 
 stories by a Jew, a Mussulman, a Protestant, a Catholic ; 
 certainly their beliefs, and the duties which result from 
 them, are too much in opposition to allow of the possibility 
 of their forming a real society. But let them be possessed 
 by a fear that a band of fanatics may come to burn that 
 house, whose roof protects them all, or, on the triumph of 
 
THE 'AVENIIt' 1C3 
 
 different parties, to cut the throat of any of them, or to 
 persecute them, whether as Jew, Mussulman, Protestant, or 
 Catholic, the common danger will unite them, and, unless 
 they themselves are blinded by a ferocious fanaticism, they 
 will not hesitate to agree together for their mutual defence, 
 an agreement which will create relations of kindness between 
 them, which will facilitate and place on a calmer and more 
 edifying footing purely doctrinal" discussions on the points 
 which separate them. In any case they will have lived, and 
 they will have lived in peace. 
 
 Then, after alluding to the successful struggle 
 of the Belgians under similar conditions, he says : 
 'And we also, whoever we may be, Catholics or 
 Protestants, Kepublicans or Monarchists, heavy 
 chains, which we had a right to believe put off for 
 ever, still weigh upon us ; . we must break them.' 
 We have a common interest. ' Let us then agree 
 on a plan of action, let us organise ourselves ; may 
 the Chamber be deluged with petitions, heavy with 
 hundreds of thousands of signatures; may all our 
 voices form but one voice ; may that voice, powerful, 
 unanimous, rise as the roar of the sea when, hurling 
 its waves against it, it strikes and overturns the in- 
 solent barrier which stands in its way.' 
 
 What is it that gives strength to our enemies ? 
 Our divisions. ' We have not wished to be free to- 
 gether, so we have all become slaves. May we profit 
 by this lesson. Let us not forget that fetters travel, 
 and that the man who forces them on others sooner 
 or later wears them himself. Frenchmen, believe 
 me, we should look on one another as brothers ; let 
 us not envy one another our part in that blessing, 
 
164 THE ABBE BE LAMENNAIS 
 
 which is the more pleasing, the more abundant for 
 each that it is possessed by the greater number, in 
 that right which is our common inheritance, and 
 without which there is none other upon the earth — 
 liberty.' Then follows a terrible picture: 'See there 
 near you those beings who cannot be named, those 
 haggard features, that sinister eye ; the spectre of '93 
 rises before you all bloody ! You shudder, but why ? 
 What have you to fear if you are united ? ' And he 
 concludes : ' What matter opinions at the foot of 
 the scaffold ? ... Be men, and while timidity 
 moves along bleating out its silly lamentations, hold 
 out one hand to your brother, and lay the other on 
 your sword.' 
 
 There is no mistaking the bearing of these words ; 
 they point to the intention of forcing matters to a 
 crisis, and then of fighting out the question at issue 
 to the bitter end, disdaining none of those methods 
 which experience had shown to be necessary in times 
 of revolution. It was not long before they began to 
 bear fruit. 
 
 Towards the end of November, that is to say, 
 within six weeks of its foundation, the Avenir felt 
 itself strong enough to face the consequences of a 
 direct attack on the Government. On November 29 
 appeared an article by Lacordaire. It was headed 
 simply : ' Aux eveques de France ' : To the bishops of 
 France. 
 
 In a penetrating analysis of the existing ecclesi- 
 astical arrangements he forces his readers to admit 
 that State appointed bishops are not to be trusted, 
 
TIIE 'AVENIR' 1G5 
 
 and that the system is utterly rotten in its most 
 
 essential details :— 
 
 The episcopate which must result from it is self-con- 
 demned. Whether it wills it or no, it is bound to be 
 unfaithful to religion. . . . The necessary plaything of 
 the thousand changes which transfer power from hand to 
 hand, it will mark in our ranks every shade of ministerial 
 and anti-Catholic opinion, before which majorities grovel in 
 turn, as their own work. . . . After having dishonoured us 
 in the mind of the peoples, they will one day give us over, 
 feeble and divided, into the hands of those in power, who 
 will look upon it as a favour to give us life in exchange for 
 our conscience. 
 
 He, then, in the deep fervonr of conviction, and 
 with that burning eloquence which was natural to 
 him, conjures the bishops to remember the dignity of 
 their calling and not to abandon the flocks entrusted 
 to them, and he concludes : — 
 
 In any case we shall not betray ourselves. . . . We 
 now make this protest ; we confide it to the memory of all 
 those Frenchmen in whom there is still a remnant of faith 
 and of shame ; to our brothers in the United States, in 
 Ireland, and in Belgium ; to all those who are in labour for 
 the liberty of the world wherever they may be ; we will 
 carry it, barefooted if need be, to the city of the Apostles, to 
 the steps of the confessional of St. Peter ; and we shall see 
 who will stand in the way of the pilgrims of God and of 
 liberty. 
 
 So open a defiance of the existing regulations 
 could not be tolerated by a Government which was 
 trying to get itself recognised by public opinion, and 
 the number was seized by the police. But the editors 
 of the Avenir had no intention of allowing the matter 
 
1G6 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 to rest before they had forced the ministers to throw 
 off •'jhe mask under which they were attempting to 
 hide from France and from the world their counter- 
 revolutionary designs. On the following day they 
 published an article by Lamennais which, in the 
 uncompromising directness of its attack, surpassed 
 everything which had as yet proceeded from his pen. 
 It was headed Ojyressian des Catholiques, dx., and it 
 contains nothing in the least calculated to soften or 
 modify the tone suggested by its title ; nor does it 
 leave any loophole or means of evasion to those 
 against whom it was written. Going at once, heed- 
 less of custom or convention, to the point at issue, 
 the writer says : ' Catholics, only yesterday, over 
 the ruins of a monarchy overthrown by the people, 
 they made to you before heaven promises of liberty. 
 How have they kept them ? Hardly had the words 
 been uttered which proclaimed your freedom, when 
 they hastened to draw tighter your chains.' 
 
 He then describes the forms of petty tyranny 
 exercised by the Government : the drawing up by the 
 Administration of prayers to be used for the State ; 
 the forbidding of the use of the cross in open-air 
 missions ; the enforced admission of the bodies of 
 excommunicated persons into churches for the per- 
 formance of the funeral ceremonies, &c. 
 
 If you were in France but a feeble minority, we should 
 say to you . . . go, quit this land of tyranny. . . . Go to live 
 among those peoples who are called barbarous ; they will 
 not come to break down the doors of the temple where you 
 celebrate the holy mysteries, or to throw a corpse at the foot 
 of your altars. . . . 
 
THE 'AVENIIt' 167 
 
 Catholics, that is what we should say to you if your 
 numbers were small ; but you are twenty-five millions of 
 men. Twenty-five millions of men do not, should not allow 
 themselves to be dictated to. You have rights, recognised 
 rights. ... Of what use are timid complainings? Groan 
 less and know how to will. . . . What is wanting in you 
 but agreement . . . whence is born vigorous and continued 
 action? They rely too much on your patience. Drag 
 your oppressors before the tribunals ; let the Chambers re- 
 sound with your demands. They will have to hear you. 
 Speak boldly and without fear. Why should you fear depu- 
 ties, who can do nothing but by you ? They are your ser- 
 vants, nothing more ; they represent France, and you are, 
 the Charter bears witness to it, the majority of Frenchmen. 
 
 Here a question presents, itself : 'Who is the possessor of 
 authority in France ? A sovereign given to us by the revo- 
 lution of July. By what title does he reign ? In virtue of 
 the national choice, under the guarantee of oaths, in which 
 he undertook to respect the rights of all of us, to maintain 
 religious liberty, and to allow freedom in matters of educa- 
 tion. This is what he promised four months ago. Are four 
 months then sufficient for the dissolving of such oaths ? If 
 they have not ceased to be binding, whence comes the per- 
 secution which is directed against us ? Either those in 
 authority cannot, or they will not in what concerns us, be 
 faithful to their promises. If they cannot, what is this 
 mockery of a sovereignty, tins miserable phantom of a govern- 
 ment? And what is there between it and us ? It is, so far 
 as we are concerned, as if it were not, and it remains for us, 
 ignoring it, to protect ourselves. 
 
 If they will not, they have broken the contract which 
 bound us to them, they have torn up their title deed ; for we 
 consider ourselves bound to submit to them, and to support 
 them, on the express condition that they, on their side, hold 
 to their engagements to us : sinon, non. 
 
 Having thus thrown to the winds the dearest 
 
168 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 traditions of the Gallican clergy on the position of 
 sovereigns in the divine economy, he sums up the 
 charges to which the Government of Louis Philippe 
 has laid itself open, after which he continues, pointedly 
 distinguishing between the cause of Catholicism and 
 that of the State-made bishops : — 
 
 As for us, simple priests and simple laymen, let us fight 
 unceasingly for our freedom, let us not suffer that any man 
 dare to exclude us from the common right. We will show 
 them that we are Frenchmen, by a determined defence of 
 what no man may take from us without violating the law of 
 the land. Let us say to the sovereign : We shall obey you 
 so long as you yourself obey that law which makes you 
 what you are, and without which you are nothing. Let us 
 say to our brothers, whatever may be their opinions, their 
 beliefs : Our interests are common, our cause is yours, as 
 yours would be ours if your rights were threatened. What 
 matter our bygone contentions, our mutual wrongs '? We 
 were all of us, by different roads, seeking what we have now 
 happily found. Henceforth there can be but one longing, 
 which should blot out all painful memories, one word which 
 should unite us : Liberty ! 
 
 It is hardly necessary to state that this number 
 too found its way into the offices of the police, and 
 might have been lost to the public had not circum- 
 stances been too strong for the Government. In 
 fact, everything seemed to show that the editors of 
 the Acenir were determined to bring matters to a 
 crisis. On November 18 an article had appeared in 
 a Dutch paper, ' De Ultramontaan,' suggesting that 
 there should be a correspondence between Catholic 
 papers all over Europe, with the Acenir as a centre; 
 and this was published in the French journal, with 
 
THE 'AVENIlt' 169 
 
 dangerous hints at a Catholic association, to be 
 formed with the express purpose of exposing the 
 petty tyrannies of provincial administrations to 
 public view ; a terrible prospect to the advisers of a 
 sovereign who was trying quietly, by the accumu- 
 lation of local precedents, to work himself into the 
 position from which his unfortunate predecessor had 
 been ousted. Then there were rumours of schools to 
 be opened in defiance of the law, and which would 
 exercise their functions in spite of the State mono- 
 poly. Everything s'eemed to point to the fact that 
 unless something were done this turbulent representa- 
 tive of an untamed and irreconcilable Catholic party 
 would get out of hand and place the Government in 
 a very embarrassing position. 
 
 Nor was this all. Shortly after the seizure of the 
 number containing the second article an event took 
 place which proved that . the appeal to the friends of 
 liberty had not been altogether in vain. The occa- 
 sion was a trial in which Lacordaire happened to be 
 involved. The point for decision turned on the 
 question whether the chaplains of colleges were to be 
 considered as public officials. The representative of 
 the Crown maintained the affirmative, and he got on 
 smoothly enough till, in the course of his argument, 
 he began to develop the proposition that chaplains 
 had a public character, since they were the repre- 
 sentatives of a foreign sovereign. This was too 
 much for Lacordaire, who sprang to his feet with the 
 exclamation, ' No, sir ! . . . We are the ministers of 
 One who is a foreigner nowhere — of God.' Upon 
 
170 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 which, we are told, the Court shook with applause, 
 and a workman was seen making his way over seats 
 and heads till he got up to the interrupter, whose 
 hand he seized, while he said, ' M. le Cur6, my pals 
 there have sent me to ask you your name.' 
 
 It was impossible to say where this kind of thing 
 might end. That the Church might become popular 
 at the expense of the Monarchy had by no means 
 entered into the calculations of the wire-pullers of 
 the Louis Philippian rdgime, and now such a con- 
 summation began to seem, not only capable of realisa- 
 tion, but probable — nay, even pressing and imminent. 
 Energetic action was necessary if the evil was to be 
 stifled in its first beginnings, and thus the Executive 
 found itself compelled to take the fatal step of in- 
 stituting a prosecution against the Avenir. 
 
 This step once taken, the Government necessarily 
 entered on a downward path. Whatever might be 
 the result, they were bound to lose. If they suc- 
 ceeded in gaining the legal point, they would stand 
 unmasked before the whole of France, and they 
 might apply to themselves a phrase of Danton's : 
 ' Lafayette, reduced to a single face, can no longer 
 be dangerous.' If they lost it, their credit would be 
 gone and their enemies victorious. The blind folly 
 of their proceedings will be more fully evident when 
 we remember that the events here described took 
 place within four months of the upheaval to which 
 Louis Philippe owed his throne and Charles X. his 
 exile. That the legal victory might have been theirs 
 is abundantly evident from the correspondence of 
 
T THE ' AVENIR ' 171 
 
 Lamennais, but it is equally clear from the same 
 source that the accused looked upon this as of com- 
 paratively minor importance. On January 14 F61i 
 wrote to Madame de Senfft : — 
 
 I am very unwell, and am crushed by the amount of work 
 I have to get through. Next week I must go to Paris . . , 
 to prepare for our trial, which is to come on on the 29th. 
 Trial by jury, especially in those cases which are connected 
 with politics, being the most uncertain thing in the world, it 
 is very possible that my next may be dated from Sainte 
 Pelagie. But what matters it ? God is there as elsewhere, 
 perhaps more than ebewhere ; and there as elsewhere it 
 is possible to defend the cause of Catholicism and of 
 liberty. . . . Every day new,streams of light are flowing over 
 the future of the world ! What matters it that so many 
 men, the voluntary slaves of self-love and of their prejudices, 
 persist in closing their eyes and standing in the way of 
 Providence? Is the ligbt less brilliant for it, or its action 
 less powerful ? While they are saying No, the Divine fiat 
 goes forth over the world, sifting the germs of a new order, 
 and the work of Heaven is accomplished. 
 
 Ill the same letter he ironically alludes to the 
 fact that foreign sovereigns were beginning to take 
 measures against the Avenir. M. de Senfft repre- 
 sented Austria at Turin : — 
 
 I think you will be able to receive the Avenir, and that 
 the prohibition will not affect you ; for though no one will 
 doubt that the king has a legitimate and unquestioned autho- 
 rity over the minds of his subjects, though he has the in- 
 alienable right to think for them and to judge for them, you 
 are not one of his subjects. 
 
 This, then, was the temper in which, as repre- 
 senting the Avenir, and as the writers of the incriini- 
 
172 THE ABBE BE LAMENNAIS 
 
 nated articles, Lamennais and Lacordaire appeared 
 to stand their trial on January 31, 1831. The former, 
 who was not an orator, was defended by M. Janvier, 
 while Lacordaire appeared in his own behalf. From 
 the first it was evident that the weight of opinion 
 was on the side of the accused. Even the public 
 prosecutor turned aside to apologise for the position 
 in which he stood, and did involuntary homage to 
 the illustrious upholder of the principles of liberty. 
 M. Janvier, as was natural, gave a rcxiimd of the life 
 and work of the great writer, pointing to the fact 
 that the cause which they all had at heart had found 
 a representative of whom Frenchmen might well be 
 proud. But the palm of oratory was carried off by 
 Lacordaire, who, in a magnificent defence, analysed 
 the anti-social policy of the ministry, and expounded 
 to his hearers the noble ideal which had inspired the 
 founders of the Avenir. He began by describing the 
 fascination which had drawn him into the present 
 struggle, and, with a profound bow to his leader, he 
 said : — 
 
 I had seen him but twice in my life, and then only for 
 a few moments, but I did not wish to leave France without 
 meeting him face to face, without asking him for his bene- 
 diction on a young man, torn by an instinct of those sorrows 
 which were consuming his invincible genius. I saw him, I 
 paid my homage to that man, at once great and simple, 
 under his modest ancestral roof ; he has allowed me to call 
 myself his friend. 
 
 Much as I might feel tempted to do so, I am 
 unable, consistently with the scope of this work, to 
 insert, or even largely to quote from, this monument 
 
THE 'AVENIR' 173 
 
 of eloquence from the inspired lips of the Abbe* 
 Lacordaire. Suffice it to say that the audience was 
 spell-bound as he ran over the various counts of his 
 charge against the ministry. We can imagine the 
 scene. A young priest, fired by the memories of 
 those days when he had sat as a law student with 
 many who were now listening to him. We can 
 understand his desire to show them, that though he 
 had renounced their profession, he was in no way 
 inferior to them ; and, above all, the warmth and 
 vigour breathed over him by the consciousness that 
 ho appeared, not merely as a professional pleader, but 
 as the champion of a cause, which ho believed to 
 be just, which was, in every sense of the word, his 
 own. Nor is it difficult to put ourselves in the place 
 of his audience. We can picture to ourselves the 
 emotion with which they listened to his vivid de- 
 scriptions, his scathing analysis of the motives which 
 lay behind the actions of, the Government, forcing 
 them to realise the pettiness of those motives com- 
 pared with the ideal set forth in the pages of the 
 Avenir. Such, for instance, is a passage in which he 
 quotes La Bruyere, who ironically describes a state 
 of things not unlike that which was aimed at by the 
 ministers of Louis Philippe : — 
 
 The great ones of the nation meet together every day at 
 a certain hour in a temple which they call a church. At 
 the end of this temple is an altar, consecrated to their God, 
 at which a priest is celebrating mysteries which they call 
 sacred, holy, awful. The great ones form a vast circle at 
 the foot of this altar, and appear standing with their backs 
 to the priest and the holy mysteries, but with their faces 
 
174 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 turned towards their king, who is seen kneeling on a kind 
 of raised dais. To him they yearn with all their minds and 
 all their hearts. One cannot but see in this a touching pic- 
 ture of the principle of subordination, for the people appear 
 to adore their prince, and the prince to adore God. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that the result of 
 the proceedings was awaited with the deepest anxiety 
 throughout the country, and when the news went 
 forth that the Avenir had been acquitted, it was 
 received with universal acclamation, for Frenchmen 
 of every shade of religious or philosophical opinion 
 had by this time become convinced that the cause 
 at stake was not merely that of Catholicism, but of 
 liberty itself, in one of its most fundamental prin- 
 ciples — the freedom of the press. 
 
 Lamennais had now won for himself a great name 
 in France ; the eyes of all were turned to him as the 
 embodiment of a future pregnant with great things, 
 seen as yet only dimly and in the far distance, yet 
 absolutely inevitable. And it is probably to his short 
 residence in Paris at this time that we owe a charac- 
 teristic incident quoted in the ' British Critic ' for 
 April 1836, from Bulwer :— 
 
 I was sitting one day [said a friend of mine to me] in 
 the bureau of the Avenir (a religious journal), waiting for 
 one of the editors of that paper, when a little man came in 
 and sat himself shiveringly down before the small fire, from 
 which I was endeavouring, in no very happy mood, to extract 
 some kind of consolation. Small, plain, and ill-dressed, with 
 large green spectacles and an immense nose, timid, awkward, 
 there was nothing at first sight very interesting either, in 
 the manner or the appearance of my acquaintance. I spoke, 
 
THE 'AVENIR' 175 
 
 however. He spoke, and in speaking his air became more 
 firm and decided — his features assumed a new cast — his eye 
 lit up — thought, suffering, compressed passion were visible 
 in his countenance — and his whole person swelled out, as it 
 were, into more spiritual and imposing proportions. ' Mon- 
 sieur l'Abbe ! ' said my friend, entering just at the moment 
 that my eye was fixed on a print opposite. The print was 
 that of the Abbe de la Mennais— the person I had been talk- 
 ing to was the Abbe de la Mennais himself ! 
 
 The acquittal of the Avenir was fatal to the 
 prestige of the Government. The legal claims of the 
 authorities had been brought to a test and had been 
 found wanting. The opportunity was not lost. On 
 February 3 the result of the trial was announced, 
 almost - immediately the ministers realised the fact 
 that a powerful organisation was working against 
 them in the country. 
 
 Adequately to describe the doings of the famous 
 Ageuce G end rale pour la Defense de la Libert d Reli- 
 gieuse would indeed be a difficult task. Founded on the 
 principle that where liberty is not given it must be 
 taken, it showed itself in every way worthy of its 
 object. Beginning with the simple idea of combina- 
 tion among Catholics, it speedily developed into a 
 gigantic organisation, having its centre in Paris, and 
 with a branch in every department and in every 
 district. In the carrying out of this seemingly au- 
 dacious and yet, as it proved, eminently practical 
 scheme, France was divided into three parts, which 
 were respectively given over to Lacordaire, Monta- 
 lembert, and De Coux. It was impossible for the 
 Government to pursue its policy without becoming 
 
176 THE AHDE DE LAMENNA1S 
 
 entangled in the powerful network thus created. 
 Like the Jacobins in the early days of the Kevolution, 
 the Agence had its emissaries in every hole and 
 corner of France. It was impossible for the meanest 
 minion of the State to speak or act without a fear 
 that his words might be taken down and his doings 
 reported ; and if by any chance he dared in the 
 exercise of his functions to interfere with a parish 
 priest or missionary, to insult the symbol of Chris- 
 tianity, or in any way to violate the principle of 
 religious liberty, he might be certain that his conduct 
 would sooner or later be published abroad in Paris, 
 and held up to the execration of that portion of the 
 populace which the ministry most feared, and which 
 they wished to draw into an alliance with themselves. 
 Even before the publication of the result of the 
 trial, which indicated not so much the period of the 
 foundation as of the final completion of the scheme, 
 the Avenir had given more than one indication of 
 the methods it intended to pursue. This gives 
 ■ peculiar interest to a passage quoted by Mgr. Eicard ; 
 it is from an article by Lamennais, which appeared 
 in November. Addressing the clergy, he says : — 
 
 One of your brothers refused, to a man who died outside 
 your communion, the words of comfort and the last prayers 
 of Christians. Your brother did well ; he acted as a free 
 man, as a priest of the Lord, determined to keep his lips 
 pure from servile benedictions. Woe to the man who 
 blesses fraudulently, who speaks of God with a venal heart ! 
 Woe to the priest who mutters lies over a coffin ; who 
 accompanies souls to the judgment of God through fear 
 of the living, or for a vile payment ! Your brother did 
 
THE ' AVENIK' 177 
 
 well. Are we the grave-diggers of the human race ? . . . 
 Your brother did well ; but the shadow ofaproconsul imagined 
 that such independence was out of place in a citizen so mean 
 as a Catholic priest. He ordered that the body should be 
 placed before the altar ; was it necessary, in order to do this, 
 to force the doors of the temple where rests, under the pro- 
 tection of the laws of the fatherland, under the safeguard 
 of liberty, the God of all men and of the great majority of 
 Frenchmen ? . . , a mere sous-prefet, a salaried minion, from 
 the sanctuary of his abode, protected from arbitrary treat- 
 ment by thirty millions of men, sent to the house of God 
 a corpse. This he did whilst you were sleeping, trusting 
 in the oath to observe the Charter of August 7, at the very 
 moment when they were exacting from you prayers to bless 
 in the person of the king the representative of the liberty of 
 a great nation. He did it in the face of the law, which ' 
 declares that all religions are free ; but how can a form of 
 worship be free if its temple be not so, if they can bring 
 there any filth, with arms in their hands ? He did it in the 
 teeth of the expressed will of a great part of the nation, he, 
 this sous-pr6fet. . . . Now that man is sitting by his hearth, 
 satisfied and pleased with himself. You would have made 
 him turn pale if, taking your dishonoured God, a staff in 
 your hand and your hat on your head, you had brought him 
 to some wooden hut, swearing no more to expose him to 
 insult in the temples of the State. 
 
 But now the position of the Avenir was no longer 
 uncertain. The Government had made its move and 
 had been checkmated ; consequently the future was 
 with Lamennais and his friends. 
 
 As has already been suggested, the nearest ap- 
 proach to this scheme in recent French history was 
 the famous organisation which played such an im- 
 portant part in the early days of the Eevolution. 
 
 N 
 
178 THE ABBE BE LAMENNAIS 
 
 The Club Breton, in the first beginnings of the States- 
 General, was simply a comparatively informal asso- 
 ciation of liberal deputies, but it soon grew into that 
 vast system of political police which issued in de- 
 nunciations of the opponents of liberty to the national 
 assemblies, or to the central Jacobin Club in Paris. 
 So now the Agence began to take the form of a kind 
 of Jacobinism of the press. As in the former case, it 
 had its local committees and its spies, who wormed 
 their way into all the mysteries of provincial govern- 
 ment. No village mayor, no sous-prefet, no police 
 agent, no one in fine who had the misfortune to wear 
 a Government uniform, was safe from them. They 
 did not, as in the case of the Jacobins, send their 
 denunciations to the Chamber, or to a central club, 
 but to the editors of the Avenir, who could now 
 publish everything under the guarantee of the freedom 
 of the press. Thus these things found their way to 
 public opinion, and to a public opinion which was 
 impossible at the time of the Revolution. The effect 
 of such denunciations was, no doubt, less personally 
 dangerous to the denounced, but it was in reality 
 more terrible, more lasting, and it might become 
 infinitely more powerful as an engine of political 
 warfare. For its strength lay in this, that standing 
 on a broad basis, the Avenir appealed to the great 
 majority of Frenchmen, not as mere parts of a system 
 driven together by fear, but as free and enlightened 
 beings. Revolution was contemplated as a possible, 
 and with some, a desirable outcome of the agitation ; 
 but the leaders of the movement differed from their 
 
THE 'AVEN1R' 179 
 
 predecessors in doing the work altogether through a 
 leavening of opinion, and in believing that the result 
 would be brought about by a general movement of 
 society as a whole. This made their action infinitely 
 more unpalatable to the friends of the past than:that 
 of the Jacobins, for if less immediate in its results, it 
 was less likely to lead to a reaction, and it seemed 
 probable that by secularising the monarchy and 
 depriving it of its divine sanction it would prepare 
 the way for it's final and irrevocable overthrow. 
 
 Yet even from the practical and immediate point 
 of view the Agence appears to have been often suc- 
 cessful. Numerous are the instances in which the 
 Government seems to have been forced to act contrary 
 to its intentions, and to give the lie to its principles. 
 We are told, for example, that when the military 
 commander at Aix ordered the Capuchins to put off 
 their distinctive dress, the Agence prosecuted him, 
 and obtained his removal ; and that when a bishop 
 was nominated to the see of Beauvais, who was not 
 considered worthy of the position, such an outcry was 
 raised in the Avenir that the candidate had to be 
 withdrawn. 
 
 Throughout the spring of 1831 the movement 
 continued steadily to make its way in public opinion. 
 Lacordaire had clearly laid down the principle for 
 which they were contending, when, in the course of 
 one of his many pleadings in the law courts, he 
 startled his hearers by an expression which I here 
 quote from the report in the A venir. 
 
180 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 God has become free with the liberty of a citizen ; we 
 demand for Him no other, we simply ask that He should be 
 recognised as a citizen of France. [Some murmurs, the 
 sense of which escaped us, reached the orator. He turned to 
 that part of the Court whence they came, and said :] ' Gentle- 
 men, if I recognised in the world to-day a nobler title than 
 that of a French citizen, or a better guarantee of liberty than 
 the right to it, I should give it to him who deigned to become 
 the slave of men that he might win freedom for them.' 
 
 Thus stated, the issue was perfectly clear, and 
 it was not long before an opportunity was found for 
 putting it to the test. 
 
 In the practical working out of the system of 
 State monopoly in education, a useful distinction was 
 made by the authorities. Special professional, moral, 
 or religious training was in some cases permitted, but 
 everything which came in any way under the category 
 of a liberal education was strictly prohibited. In 
 practice this led to an abundance of legal casuistry 
 and much misunderstanding. It appears, for instance, 
 that the clergy of Lyons were in the habit of giving 
 gratuitously to their choir boys lessons in Latin and 
 other things, which were not considered absolutely 
 essential to their immediate calling. They were 
 prosecuted and forced to dismiss the children and to 
 allow them to attend the State schools. ' Very well ! ' 
 said the editors of the Aveuir, ' you think you have 
 only to deal with choir boys ; we shall force you to 
 fight the matter out with men.' 
 
 They determined to open a school in Paris in 
 defiance of the regulations of the Educational Depart- 
 ment. The business was undertaken by Lacordaire 
 
THE 'AVENIlf 181 
 
 and Montalembert, who, on May 9, assembled a 
 number of children and proceeded to exercise the 
 functions of ordinary schoolmasters, announcing their 
 intention of restricting themselves in nothing, and of 
 paying no deference to the State monopoly. The 
 police, as it was intended they should, heard of it, 
 came to the place and ordered the children, ' in the 
 name of the law,' to leave. ' In the name of your 
 parents,' said Lacordaire, ' I command you to stay.' 
 And the children, inspired probably by the prospect 
 of a row, unanimously answered, ' We will stay.' 
 What followed we know not, but eventually the room 
 was cleared, the papers, sealed up, the doors locked, 
 and a prosecution was instituted against the offending 
 schoolmasters. 
 
 This time the law was against them, but it so 
 happened that the trial became the means of their 
 uttering their protest before the highest tribunal in 
 the land. Charles de Montalembert, through the 
 death of his father, had just succeeded to the peerage, 
 and he now claimed his right of being tried by the 
 august assembly of which he had become a member. 
 The claim being admitted, the privilege had to be 
 extended to Lacordaire, as the circumstances of the 
 case would not allow of a separate trial. 
 
 The occasion was a great one, and we can imagine 
 that the accused were not unprepared when they 
 appeared at the bar of the House on September 20. 
 
 The task which the procureur-general had to per- 
 form was by no means an easy one. The managers 
 of the free school had acted in accordance with a 
 
182 THE ABBE BE LAMENNAIS 
 
 clause of the charter which expressly proclaimed the 
 principle of liberty of education ; but no law had as 
 yet been passed to give effect to this clause, and, 
 consequently, it was evident that they had acted 
 illegally. This fact formed the main basis of the 
 prosecution ; but the argument was dangerous, and 
 might be interpreted in a manner very embarrassing 
 to the Executive. For the procureur, besides being 
 the representative of the established Government, 
 owed his position to the revolution of July, and to the 
 very irregular and certainly illegal proceedings which 
 had followed it, in which, in his official capacity, he 
 had played a leading part, notably in the prosecution 
 of the leading members of the Polignac ministry, for 
 violating a clause in the charter not yet regulated by 
 a law. The comparison was an awkward one, and it 
 was natural enough that the minister should not 
 allude to it in his speech, confining himself rigidly to 
 the legal question, in which he was undoubtedly in 
 the right. But Lacordaire had by this time acquired 
 considerable facility in debate ; and when he rose to 
 make his defence, he went straight to the point, which, 
 it was hoped, would be avoided : — 
 
 My lords [he began], can I believe ray eyes ? I ana 
 astounded at finding myself in the place of the accused, while 
 the procureur-general appears as a representative of the 
 public authorities. I fail to understand how he can dare 
 to appear against me, seeing that he himself lately, in this 
 very hall, committed the crime of which he now accuses me. 
 For what is this accusation which he brings against me ? 
 That I have acted on a right proclaimed in the charter but 
 not yet regulated by a law. Only yesterday he demanded of 
 
THE 'AVENIR' 183 
 
 you the heads of four ministers, in virtue of a right pro- 
 claimed in the charter but not yet regulated by law ! If he 
 could do it, so could I, with this difference, that he demanded 
 blood, while I only wished to give free education to a few 
 children of the people. We both of us acted with the sanc- 
 tion of Article G9 of the Charter. If the procureur-general 
 is guilty, how can he accuse me ? If he is innocent, again 
 how can he accuse me '? 
 
 And so he continued, following in detail the 
 various counts of the accusation, and the arguments 
 by which they were supported, till he succeeded in 
 branding the regime of Louis Philippe as depending 
 for its sanction on repressive laws, passed under 
 those very forms of government whose rejection by 
 the French people was the excuse for its own 
 existence. 
 
 It would be impossible to imagine anything more 
 damaging to a ministry which was trying to subsist 
 on the fiction of Liberalism. Such a defence, worked 
 out with all the force of , professional acumen, was 
 infinitely more calculated to lower his accusers in 
 the eyes of the rising democracy than the burn- 
 ing but youthful enthusiasm of Montalembert, who 
 wished that, if faith was to be destroyed, it should 
 have for its tomb ' the liberty of the world ! ' or 
 even his own eloquent conclusion : ' When Socrates, 
 in that first and famous trial for freedom of teaching, 
 was about to quit the presence of his judges, he said 
 to them, " We are going out of this place, you to live, 
 I to die." Not thus, my lords, do we leave you. 
 Whatever may be your decision, we go out from here 
 to live ; for liberty and religion are immortal.' 
 
184 THE ABBE DE LAMENNA1S 
 
 The law was against them, and they were con- 
 demned to a fine of 100 francs, the minimum penalty. 
 But to this they were indifferent, for they had gained 
 a moral victory, and they went forth into the world, 
 confident in the future. The cause they had fought 
 for was not yet gained, but it had only to await the 
 day when not only the rdgime of Louis Philippe, 
 but monarchy itself, would be driven from France 
 by the Eevolution of '48. 
 
 The Avenir had now been in existence for almost 
 a year. Short though the time had been, it had 
 done an immense work. Keligion, which, since the 
 days of Bossuet, had been identified with the idea of 
 the divine right of kings, was now freed from that 
 encumbrance, for it had been shown that the in- 
 terests of Catholicism might be very well defended 
 by those who were utterly indifferent to the fate of 
 monarchy, and who looked on it merely as an accident 
 in the growth of the social organism. Nay, the 
 editors had even gone further than this in threaten- 
 ■ ing that, if the authorities stood in their way, they 
 were ready to have a hand in their overthrow. In 
 this sense must be understood their constant appeals 
 to the people, their recommendations to Catholics 
 and friends of liberty to join the National Guard 
 which had been so powerful in the days of the Eevo- 
 lution, the organisation of the Agence, that terrible 
 and merciless Jacobinism of the press. In fact, every- 
 thing tends to show that they went the whole length 
 of the democratic demands— the unrestricted free- 
 dom of education, of speech, of conscience, and of 
 
THE 'AVEN1R' 185 
 
 the press. In March they had published an article 
 by Lamennais in which he pointed out that, whereas 
 the Eoyalists had nothing to lose by the establish- 
 ment of a. Republic, the ^Republicans had very little to 
 gain if the existing system were properly worked. 
 The principle was already there, the final transfor- 
 mation was merely a matter of time. This article, 
 too, contained a remarkable passage advocating uni- 
 versal suffrage : — 
 
 Amongst those who are independent, who enjoy in the 
 commune the rights' of citizenship, how and on what 
 principle will you admit some to the exercise of their 
 inalienable rights, while you exclude others ? Any distinc- 
 tion which it may please y'ou to make under this head will 
 be an insult to those whom you subject to a shameful exclu- 
 sion, and will rest on a basis at once arbitrary, whimsical, 
 and absurd. For if you are asked to explain how you came 
 to form your categories, you must answer that you acted 
 on a presumed capacity for exercising the right. It follows 
 from this, that you declare the majority of Frenchmen 
 incapable of rising to the effort of intelligence which is 
 necessary for deciding if such an inhabitant of a commune 
 has the reputation of being a man of ability and of honour. 
 But who is more capable of judging than they are ? Get 
 this into your heads ; the man whom they choose will, 
 in nine cases out of ten, be the one who has given the 
 greatest guarantees as a local administrator, and, as an 
 elector of deputies, whose mission should come from the 
 whole nation, and consequently from the communes. 
 
 And see what a debasing solution you have found for 
 this problem of capacity, which you yourselves admit to 
 be a difficult one. You go to every Frenchman and you 
 ask him, ' What do you pay in taxes ? ' 'I pay,' says one, 
 ' 240 francs.' ' Good ! you must be a man of intelligence ; go 
 and vote, we give you leave. And you, how much do you 
 
18G THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 pay ? ' 'I only pay 239 francs 99 c' ' That is unfortunate ; 
 but we cannot allow you to vote, for the presumption is 
 that you are a fool.' Is not this, I ask, a bitter mockery of 
 common sense and of justice ? 
 
 Not the least important evidences of the influence 
 of the Avenir are the State prosecutions in which 
 from time to time the editors were involved. In 
 these, as we have seen, they came off in every case 
 victorious, at least in public opinion. On the whole, 
 we may say that by the autumn of 1831 they had 
 fought their way into a very great position, and had 
 come to be recognised as the tried champions of the 
 principle of liberty in all its forms. The representa- 
 tives of the king and of the king's religion had 
 been everywhere defeated, and men were coming to 
 see an almost unnecessary connection between Ultra- 
 montanism and Democracy, between the Pope and 
 the People. 
 
 Meanwhile a more powerful enemy was slowly 
 but surely undermining their position. 
 
 Since the signing of the Concordat under the 
 consulate, nomination to the episcopal sees had been 
 practically in the hands of the State. Under 
 Napoleon, as we have seen, the bishops preserved a 
 certain amount of independence. Succeeding imme- 
 diately to the prelates who owed their position to 
 their acceptance of the civil constitution of the 
 clergy, and forced to recognise as their colleagues a 
 number of these who had been allowed to continue 
 in office, they naturally looked with horror on any- 
 thin" which savoured of schism. Then, again, 
 
THE ' AVENIR ' 187 
 
 Napoleon was a usurper, while the traditions of the 
 episcopate were strongly Iloyalist ; they were, there- 
 fore, naturally ready to oppose him on every possible 
 occasion. This being so, it offers no matter for sur- 
 prise that they steadily resisted him in his designs 
 on the Church. 
 
 But the Eestoration brought about a change in 
 their attitude. As their predecessors under Louis XIV. 
 had supported that monarch in his opposition to 
 Home, so in the later period these courtly prelates 
 had been ready to -resent the interference of what 
 they considered a foreign power with the royal pre- 
 rogative ; hence the difficulties with which an Ultra- 
 montane like Lamennais, ardent Iloyalist though he 
 had been in his earlier days, had had to contend. 
 
 After July the king was no longer legitimate, and 
 the Catholic-royalist party, with the bishops at their 
 head, would have liked to organise an agitation for 
 the return of the Bourbons, or, at any rate, to have 
 got the world to believe that the new rdgime was 
 absolutely inconsistent with the principles of Catho- 
 licism. 
 
 What must have been their horror when they 
 read the first numbers of the Avenirl How great 
 must have been their consternation when they began 
 to realise that all that was most energetic in French 
 Catholicism was being dragged into a movement 
 directed, it is true, against the government of Louis 
 Philippe, but holding out the hand of friendship, not 
 to the exiled Bourbons, but to the democracy ! In 
 the eyes of many such an alliance was no less than 
 
188 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 blasphemous, and we can imagine their impotent 
 rage as they felt that their power was slipping away 
 from them. Of what use were worn out formulas, 
 setting forth the impiousness of rebelling against a 
 sovereign by divine right, when those who were 
 hourly undergoing martyrdom for the cause of Catho- 
 licism were boldly proclaiming the rights of the 
 people, and were coupling them before all men with 
 the name of God ? Many were the pious tea-tables 
 round which heads were shaken as the situation was 
 gravely discussed, and a dignified protest was entered 
 against a movement which seemed likely to lead to a 
 state of things unique in the history of Catholicism, 
 a division into two parties : the one composed of the 
 bishops and the old nobility ; the other, as the A veitir 
 was never tired of reminding them, in respectful 
 irony, of simple priests and simple laymen, under the 
 leadership of a man who had deserted the cause 
 with which he had hitherto been identified. 
 
 From the shaking of pious heads at the tea parties 
 of devotees, to gossip and story telling, the distance 
 is not very great, and there is evidence that the 
 case before us was no exception to the rule. Things 
 were gravely whispered round, and it was charitably 
 hoped that they were not true. Sayings were re- 
 peated in slightly exaggerated form, but it was 
 supposed that they meant nothing serious ; and so 
 on through all the carefully guarded detail of con- 
 scientious slander. However the thing may have 
 happened, for the facts have not come down to us, it 
 is certain that during the year 1831 Lamennais was 
 
THE 'AVENIR' 189 
 
 continually being subjected to this kind of petty 
 persecution. An instance of it may be seen in a 
 letter which he wrote on April 1G to the Abbe 
 Auger : — 
 
 I do not know who showed you the letter, said to be in 
 my handwriting, in which are expressed opinions which 
 should inspire horror in any Catholic. Just such a letter 
 has been secretly circulated in the south of France. So far 
 I have not been able to discover the centre of these infernal 
 machinations ; hut I have already got hold of a clue, by the 
 aid of which I hope I shall succeed in finding it out. All 
 honest— people are interested in the public exposure of 
 the authors of these cowardly calumnies, these infamous 
 intrigues, and I have too much confidence in your sense of 
 
 justice and your good faith to doubt for a moment that 
 you will give me all the information in your power to 
 assist me in obtaining this end. I ask nothing of you which 
 is not an obligation of justice, a rigorous duty, nothing 
 which I have not the right to demand in a court of law. 
 What I want to know above all things is the name of the 
 person who showed you the, letter in question. Under 
 similar circumstances I should not hesitate to do for you 
 what I now ask you to do for me, and I should believe, 
 if I did not do it, that I was not only wanting in charity, 
 but that I was committing a horrible act of injustice. 
 I have the honour to be, respectfully, Monsieur l'Abbe, 
 Your very humble and very obedient servant. 
 
 Considering the irritation, which was natural 
 under the circumstances, we cannot but be agreeably 
 surprised when we find him on the following day, 
 after informing a correspondent that he has given 
 curie blanche to his friend the Abbe" Cambalot to act 
 for him, adding : ' I have reason to believe that a 
 
190 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 priest actually in misfortune is not altogether a 
 stranger to the intrigues of which I complain. I 
 do not wish to make his position worse ; ' and 
 he adds that a written apology from various people 
 concerned, to be published in the Avenir, will be 
 sufficient. 
 
 This is but an isolated instance. The stories 
 continued to be circulated during the year 1831, and 
 the situation became intolerable, especially when it 
 was discovered that reported expressions of opinion 
 on the part of the Nuncio, Mgr. Lambruschini, were 
 going round with the rest. 
 
 From what we already know of the temperament 
 of Lamennais, we can easily imagine the galling 
 effect of these cowardly, underhand operations. He 
 was deeply wounded. There is evidence in his 
 correspondence of constant trouble from that nervous 
 illness from which he seems never to have been 
 wholly free. But the harm done was not merely 
 personal, it reacted on the movement which Lamen- 
 nais represented. The bishops began to censure the 
 Avenir in their pastoral letters, and many of them 
 used their authority to prevent its reception by the 
 faithful in their dioceses. This policy may have 
 been short-sighted, but it was eminently successful. 
 Amongst Catholics the condemnation was re-echoed 
 by the worldly wise, the interested, and the timidly 
 devout — all those, that is to say, the slothful serenity 
 of whose devotional or social atmosphere had been 
 disturbed by the somewhat acrid tones of the uncom- 
 promising journal, and who seized the opportunity 
 
THE 'AVENIR' 191 
 
 which now offered itself of turning over and com- 
 posing themselves to sleep through that great drama 
 of human society, the action of which was beginning 
 too vividly to impress them, lulled into repose of 
 conscience and of nerves by the consoling thought 
 that the catastrophe would not be from God, but 
 from the devil. On the other hand, this storm of 
 episcopal censure was not without its effect on those 
 who, though not recognising the pre-suppositions of 
 Catholic theology, had been drawn to the movement 
 by the boldness of the enterprising paper. For 
 though Catholicism as a mere protest of the past 
 was a thing on which they could have looked with 
 indifference, as embodying formulae interesting from 
 an antiquarian point of view, and as having a place 
 in a former stage of the growth of the human or- 
 ganism, it was a very different matter when it pre- 
 sented itself speaking to the modern world in its 
 own language, and prepared with the most powerful 
 organisation that world had ever seen, to place itself 
 at the head of the movement produced by the throes 
 of struggling humanity in its effort to give birth to 
 a future already seen, but as yet unrealised. With 
 the opposition of the bishops, and more especially 
 when that opposition took the form of definite 
 ecclesiastical censure, the ideal which had at first 
 seemed possible, and even imminent, became a mere 
 chimera, the phantom of youthful or overwrought 
 brains. As a result, the Avenir was discredited with 
 many who would naturally have sympathised with it, 
 though not agreeing with its fundamental doctrines. 
 
192 THE A15BE 1>E LAMENNA1S 
 
 The circulation began to fall off, and the situation 
 became impossible. 
 
 We are not, then, surprised to find Lamennais 
 writing in November to Madame de Senfft : — 
 
 The bishops have destroyed everything ; they are for- 
 bidding people to read our journal ; they are persecuting 
 priests suspected of a leaning towards our doctrines ; they 
 are moving heaven and earth to revive Gallicanism, kindling 
 a hatred against the Church, the consequences of which 
 frighten me, whilst we had succeeded in bringing back, not 
 only to the faith but to the practise of religion, many even 
 from amongst the atheists. And what are their methods of 
 attack ? Interdicts, intrigues, underhand dealings, a fright- 
 ful system of organised calumny ; and this opposition has 
 been supported by liome. Without explaining herself . . . 
 without wishing to pronounce a judgment we asked for 
 humbly six months ago, she encourages and even urges on 
 her enemies and ours. The position is untenable ; we are 
 going to abandon the Anenir and the Agence, which was 
 working splendidly. The only barrier which stood between 
 the Church and material force is about to fall . . . my soul 
 is torn with grief. They repel, they trample on those who 
 ask only one thing, that they should be allowed to sacrifice 
 themselves, and the triumph of the Church would have been 
 certain had they only wished it. . . . But no, her rulers 
 have said it, it is necessary that she should die, it is neces- 
 sary. ... I cannot go on. One cannot in cold blood speak 
 of the death of religion and of society. 
 
 Had, then, the light gone out ? Had this noble 
 ideal been dashed to the ground ? I do not think 
 so. The passage continues with a suggestion of 
 hope. But the blow was a terrible one. On such 
 occasions Lamennais, always irritable, was unap- 
 proachable. At this time he was living in Paris, and 
 
THE 'AVENIR' 193 
 
 it is more than probable that his appearances at 
 the offices of the Avenir were looked forward to 
 with dread. Under the circumstances, to venture 
 to advise him required a considerable amount of 
 courage. Nevertheless, a man was found who had 
 that courage — it was Lacordaire. With a simplicity 
 and loyalty which do honour to his character rather 
 than to his judgment, he suggested that the principal 
 editors should go on a pilgrimage to Home, personally 
 to lay their case before the Holy See, and Lamennais, 
 swayed, perhaps, by conflicting thoughts, and pro- 
 bably buoyed up by a sudden hope, answered, ' Yes, 
 we will go to Borne.' 
 
 Then the Avenir came to an end. 
 
 An article was written, signed by all the editors, 
 in which they bade farewell to their readers, an- 
 nouncing the approaching departure of Lamennais, 
 Lacordaire, and Montalembert. There is a touch of 
 sadness in their description of the short but brilliant 
 career of the journal ; there is a tone of deep 
 humility and submission in their attitude towards 
 Borne, but there is a ring of defiance to their 
 Gallican opponents, to those whose dearest preju- 
 dices they trampled on in this very act of filial piety. 
 Indeed, the friends of the Government must have 
 realised the full weight of the blow which was aimed 
 at them in this article of November 15, the last act 
 in the career of the Avenir, the first in that long 
 agony of the Gallican theory which was to end in 
 the Vatican Council. 
 
194 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 Eight centuries ago, Philip Augustus, led away by the 
 violence of his passions, determined to repudiate a queen to 
 whom he had always denied her conjugal rights. Ingerburg 
 of Danemark appeared before a council, composed partly of 
 laymen, partly of ecclesiastics, and they read to her the 
 sentence which deprived her of her crown. The poor virgin 
 of the north did not understand the language of the Franks. 
 . . . But when they had explained to her by signs the 
 destiny which was in store for her, she gave utterance three 
 times to a cry which is of every language and in every 
 heart : ' Rome ! Eome ! Eome ! ' 
 
 She was brought back to her prison. But her cry had 
 crossed the mountains, and the echoes of the eternal city 
 had repeated it. Celestin III., and after him Innocent III., 
 then occupied the See of Peter. The divorce was declared 
 null, the servile council censured, the kingdom placed under 
 an interdict until Ingerburg was restored to the throne of 
 France. 
 
 And we also give utterance to this immortal cry. The 
 successor of Innocent III. is at the Vatican. 
 
 One word more. We said, a year ago, in an article 
 which had the glory of bringing down upon us the first 
 manifestations of administrative anger : We now make this 
 protest. . . . We will carry it, barefooted, if necessary, to the 
 city of the Apostles, to the steps of the confession^ of 
 St. Peter, and we shall see who will stand in the way of the 
 pilgrims of God and of liberty. 
 
 The pilgrims are about to depart. May God protect 
 them ! 
 
195 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 APPEAL TO ROME. CONDEMNATION 
 
 When, in the early days of the great Eevolution, the 
 tricolour flag was adopted by the victorious Liberals 
 as a national emblem, it was prophesied that it would, 
 go the round of the world. 
 
 Under Napoleon this prediction had almost been 
 fulfilled. It is true that this did not happen till the 
 principles which that emblem represented had been 
 thrown into the background, and almost totally ob- 
 scured by the military organisation of the democracy; 
 still, it was those principles which gave a sanction to 
 the operations of the imperialised Republic flowing 
 over the borders of France, and permeating the mon- 
 archical populations of old Europe. 
 
 In no country was this result more thoroughly 
 realised than in Italy. Undermined by internal dis- 
 cord, sapped in its vital energies by the petty conten- 
 tions of local States, the land of the Ca?sars and of 
 the Renaissance had become the legitimate prey of 
 foreign enterprise — the hope of Austrian statecraft. 
 With the invasion of the republican armies all this 
 was changed. General Bonaparte, stirred perhaps 
 by personal ambition, or possibly by the Italian blood 
 
 o 2 
 
196 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 which throbbed in his veins, but more probably by 
 both of these, laid the foundations of unity and inde- 
 pendence in the creation of the Cisalpine Kepublic, 
 formed of the central States whose sovereigns he had 
 driven out. As Emperor of the French he continued 
 this policy, adding considerably to the original con- 
 glomeration, and transforming' the whole into the 
 Italian kingdom. Thus it happened that when he 
 fell, in 1814, the greater part of Italy had come to be 
 united into a single State, while those provinces 
 which preserved a shadow of independence were 
 governed by nominees of the Emperor, that is to say, 
 of the French Eevolution. 
 
 The series of military operations which led to the 
 overthrow of Napoleon in 1814 has been generally 
 considered as a War of Liberation, and, on the whole,, 
 the description is not utterly inapplicable to it, 
 though there are grave reasons for questioning the 
 motives of those principally concerned. On the other 
 hand, thus to describe the dealings of the Powers 
 with Italy would be to invert the meaning of terms. 
 The net result in this case of their deliberations was 
 to place the sovereignty in most of the States in the 
 hands of the nominees of Austria, and to shatter the 
 hopes of those who aspired to national unity and in- 
 dependence. There were, however, three important 
 exceptions, and these in the end led to the failure of 
 the system : they were Piedmont, the Eoman State, 
 and Naples. 
 
 The first, with some additions, was restored to the 
 house of Savoy, the second to the Pope, while the 
 
APPEAL TO ROME. CONDEMNATION 197 
 
 last was continued to Napoleon's former marshal, 
 Murat, who had bought the favour of the victors by 
 an opportune desertion of his leader. It was in 
 Naples that the troubles of the established order 
 &mt began. It was there that the afterwards power- 
 ful secret society of the Carbonari first made its 
 influence felt. Murat, who had learned the lesson of 
 combining ambition with an appearance of liberalism 
 at the Court of Napoleon, favoured the movement, 
 and when his former master returned from Elba, he 
 invaded the neighbouring States, calling on the 
 Italian people to join him in a struggle for national 
 independence. The attempt was premature, and it 
 ended "in the capture and execution of the enter- 
 prising general, and the re-establishment of the 
 Bourbons in his kingdom ; but it had the effect of 
 spreading the idea of national unity, and of demon- 
 strating the utility of an organisation like that of the 
 Carbonari. 
 
 That society continued to grow till it had a 
 branch in every part of the country ; and it formed 
 the centre of the many conspiracies and dangerous, 
 though abortive, attempts at revolution with which 
 the newly established Governments had constantly to 
 deal in the period following the final overthrow of 
 Napoleon in 1815. 
 
 Nowhere was its action more pronounced than in 
 the States of the Church, and it is with these that 
 we are here principally concerned. It is abundantly 
 evident, from contemporary literature, that the Popes 
 might at this time have succeeded in winning for 
 
198 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 themselves a great position, as the representatives of 
 a great idea ; but, unfortunately, no one capable of 
 realising this was elected to the See of Peter. 
 Pius VII., himself a Liberal, was ably supported by 
 such men as Consalvi, but though he showed con- 
 siderable courage in his dealings with Napoleon, he 
 was incapable of adopting and carrying through a 
 great scheme of policy, and when he died, in 1823, 
 nothing had been done to convince the Italian people 
 that the Papacy was ready to undertake the responsi- 
 bility of placing itself at the head of the movement 
 for national existence. 
 
 His successor, Leo XII., the friend of Lamennais, 
 was mediaeval in his sympathies. By nature he was 
 by no means despotic, but his reign became the 
 occasion of a fatal reaction, sometimes marked by 
 frightful atrocities, as in the case of the condemna- 
 tion of upwards of 500 persons at Eavenna, by the 
 truly proconsular Legato a latere, Cardinal Eivarola, 
 for different degrees of complicity in the action of 
 secret societies. Thus it happened that the name 
 of one of the best intentioned of Popes came to 
 be identified in the eyes of the Italians with the 
 revival of inquisitorial methods, the encouragement 
 of informers, secret trials before interested tribunals, 
 and all the abominations of which men had fondly 
 imagined that they had finally disappeared. This 
 period, too, was marked by odious measures, such as 
 the depriving the Jews of their civil rights, and sub- 
 jecting them once more to all the degrading regula- 
 tions of the Ghetto, from which a growing humanity 
 
APPEAL TO ROME. CONDEMNATION 199 
 
 had freed them; and by the encouragement of 
 societies of the nature of the Sanfedisti, which, 
 from their harmless origin as religious confraternities, 
 had come to assume a politico-ecclesiastical aspect, 
 as organisations for the furthering of reactionary 
 aims. This last fact became of the utmost import- 
 ance in the history of the Koman States, for the 
 Sanfedisti grew into a powerful and partially autho- 
 rised system of police, which promoted the denuncia- 
 tion and prosecution of all who were suspected of 
 affiliation to the Carbonari and similar societies. 
 
 The result was inevitable. Hundreds of men 
 were condemned on evidence which was justly con- 
 sidered insufficient, for any evidence would be con- 
 sidered insufficient when it was got up by a party and 
 examined before a secret tribunal. Consequently, 
 when Leo XII. died, his body was accompanied to 
 the grave by the execrations of his temporal sub- 
 jects, who naturally forgot the undoubted good tbat 
 he had done in the suppression of brigandage and 
 the introduction of certain necessary reforms. 
 Lamennais, who knew this Pope only in his ponti- 
 fical capacity, expresses his indignation at this treat- 
 ment in his correspondence. Perhaps, had he known 
 the facts, he would have refrained from doing so. 
 
 In March 1829 began the short and stormy 
 pontificate of Pius VIII. He found his own 
 dominions in hopeless confusion, ready to revolt on 
 the slightest provocation. Then came the revo- 
 lution of July 1830, in Paris, and it was the signal 
 for an outbreak in Poland and in Belgium, while we 
 
200 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 know, from Silvio Pellico's account, in his Mie 
 Prigioni, that it was the cause of considerable 
 trepidation to the Austrian Government, especially in 
 its dealings with Italy. This universal ferment of 
 the Catholic world seems to have undermined the 
 health of the luckless pontiff, and he died on 
 November 30, 1830. 
 
 The interregnum was taken advantage of by the 
 Carbonari. During the sitting of the conclave, the 
 low, sullen murmurings of approaching .revolution in 
 Eome reached the ears of the assembled cardinals. 
 On February 2, 1831, Cardinal Capellari was dragged 
 from the quiet seclusion of a cloister, and ascended 
 to the chair of St. Peter as Gregory XVI. His 
 election was immediately followed by a general con- 
 flagration. On February 4 there was a rising in 
 Bologna, where the people imprisoned the legate, 
 and established a provisional government, and this 
 was followed by similar outbreaks in the neighbour- 
 ing portions of the States of the Church. The new 
 Pope, as I have said, was a monk inexperienced in 
 the things of the world, and the position in which he 
 found himself must have filled him with consterna- 
 tion. The papal troops were not to be trusted. In 
 many cases they showed signs that they were ready 
 to fraternise with the people. To call in the 
 Austrians would be a dangerous step, for their recog- 
 nised policy was gradually to reduce the whole of 
 Italy to a state of dependency; and, besides, the 
 French Government had proclaimed the principle 
 of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other 
 
APPEAL TO ROME. CONDEMNATION 201 
 
 countries, and had stated its intention of supporting 
 this principle by force of arms. This being so t 
 Austrian intervention must inevitably be accom^ 
 panied by a French invasion. But the situation got 
 steadily worse, and everything seemed to point to an 
 approaching dissolution of the temporal power. There 
 was no help for it. Austria, hardly waiting for a 
 formal invitation, sent an army into the Papal States, 
 and so did France. 
 
 Thus the year 1831 was parsed between continued 
 fighting with the revolution and dangerous diplo- 
 matic moves. On the one hand, the Pope was 
 trembling before the threats of a rising and angry 
 democracy, which might possibly become victorious ; 
 and, on the other, he was wavering between the fear 
 of Austria and uncertainty as to the intentions of 
 France, which was nominally in sympathy with the 
 insurgents. A compromise with the revolution was 
 impossible ; things had gone too far. There remained 
 then only the two intervening Powers, and of these 
 it was of the utmost importance to conciliate the 
 French, whose active help of the Italians would be 
 fatal to the papal cause. So great was the confusion 
 in the council chambers of Kome, that the Sovereign 
 Pontiff had not yet been able to issue the customary 
 letter of greeting to the Catholic world on his election. 
 
 And so the year 1831 drew to its close, amid the 
 clashing of arms, the underground rumours of the 
 smouldering fires of a democratic revolution, and the 
 hopeless flounderings of a tangled diplomacy, when 
 suddenly the news went round that three Frenchmen 
 
202 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 had arrived in the Eternal City to ask for the bless- 
 ing of the Pope on the principles of Liberty, Equality, 
 and Fraternity, together with all the demands of a 
 militant democracy. 
 
 The news of the withdrawal of the Avenir was 
 received with loud expressions of indignation by the 
 friends of liberty in France. Letters of condolence 
 were poured in upon the editors, and the pilgrims set 
 out on their journey accompanied by the prayers 
 and good wishes of a crowd of sympathisers. Their 
 passage through the departments was like a triumphal 
 progress. At Lyons they were greeted by the work- 
 men, who had risen against their employers and 
 obtained the mastery of the city. Their reception 
 at Marseilles has been graphically described by 
 Mgr. Ricard from information obtained on the 
 spot : — 
 
 At the Porte d'Aix the dusty diligence in which they 
 journeyed was met by a crowd of admirers, who gave them 
 an enthusiastic welcome, and drew them, in the midst of 
 repeated cheering, to the modest hotel in the Rue du Petit 
 Saint Jean, where they were to pass the night. 
 
 Next day, at a given hour, when Lamennais appeared 
 in the church of St. Theodore to say his Mass, all the 
 clergy of the town had assembled spontaneously . . . and 
 the sanctuary was filled with canons and priests in their 
 distinctive dress. 
 
 The bishop, too, Mgr. de Mazenod, was there ; he as- 
 sured Lamennais of his sympathy, thus separating him- 
 self from the great majority of his colleagues, and he in- 
 vited the three travellers to a magnificent reception given 
 in their honour at his palace. 
 
APPEAL TO ROME. CONDEMNATION 203 
 
 Passing into Italy by the Eiviera, they were 
 enraptured by the subtle enchantment of the scenery 
 and the soft fragrance of the atmosphere. But 
 Lamennais soon awoke from his dream. 
 
 Such [he tells us in his Affaires de Borne] is the in- 
 fluence over us of our earliest impressions, that even 
 here, in the midst of these smiling and magnificent scenes, 
 nothing seemed to me to equal those which had delighted 
 me in my young days — the rugged, bare coasts of Brittany, 
 its storms, its granite rocks lashed by the green waves, its 
 crags whitened by their foam, those long, deserted strands, 
 where nothing strikes' the ear but the low moaning of the 
 sea, the sharp cry of the sea-gull wheeling in the mist, 
 and the sad, soft note of the swift v 
 
 As' they advanced into Italy, he seems to have 
 become more and more disenchanted : ' We saw 
 pigeons perching on the cornices of a hall painted by 
 Raphael, while a wild caper forced its roots between 
 the joints of the marble, and lichen covered its green 
 and white slabs.' Everywhere they were met by the 
 inevitable signs of decay : ' From twelve to fifteen 
 Franciscans wander to-day in the vast solitude of the 
 convent of Assisi, formerly inhabited by six thousand 
 monks.' In passing through Umbria they came upon 
 a spectacle which suggested painful reflections: 
 ' There, guarded by a body of papal sbirri, was a troop 
 of poor wretches chained together, two and two. 
 The faces of many of them bore more evident traces 
 of suffering than of crime. They crowded round us, 
 holding out their hands, and crying piteously for 
 some bajocchi ycr caritd. We had before us the 
 descendants of the masters of the world.' 
 
204 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 Then they came to the Eternal City. Very dif- 
 ferent was the impression it produced on them, but 
 especially on the two priests, for Montalembert was 
 too young as yet to strike out a course for himself ; 
 he was content to follow, provided he could find a 
 leader worthy of the high aspirations which troubled 
 his youthful imagination, and for the present he had 
 found such a leader in Lamennais. 
 
 For some time past Lacordaire had been troubled 
 by doubts as to the wisdom of the course he had been 
 pursuing. As we have seen, it was not without grave 
 misgivings that he had joined Lamennais in 1830. 
 He had inwardly struggled against the fascination 
 of the great writer. He had objected to his philo- 
 sophy, he had been frightened at his political ten- 
 dencies, and he had secretly rebelled against the 
 absolute submission required by the master of his 
 disciples. Nevertheless he had been drawn along, 
 almost in spite of himself, by the subtle power of 
 superior genius. Thus he had become a most active 
 and enthusiastic co-operator in the work of the 
 Avenir and of the Agence, and had fully committed 
 himself to the principles advocated in every phase 
 of the movement. He did not regret the fact. 
 ' However cruel,' he wrote, ' our present situation 
 may be, it can take nothing from the enjoyments 
 of the year which has just drawn to its close ; it will 
 remain eternally engraven on my heart as a virgin 
 who has passed away.' But he felt the growing 
 influence of Lamennais, and he was frightened at 
 it. Now that the Avenir was withdrawn, he was no 
 
APPEAL TO ROME. CONDEMNATION 205 
 
 longer buoyed up by the excitement of active work, 
 of alternate victory and defeat. He was conscious 
 that a mysterious power was gaining possession of 
 him, and he felt that he was not strong enough to 
 struggle against it. 
 
 To him, then, Home became a means of deliver- 
 ance. He was deeply impressed by. the awful gran- 
 deur, by the venerable majesty of the Eternal City. 
 Before this all else seemed to fade away — the Avenir, 
 liberty, Lamennais himself became as nothing in 
 comparison. 
 
 To the leader of the movement the matter ap- 
 peared in a different light. He had already seen 
 Borne,- and it did not now burst upon him for the 
 first time in all the grandeur of its secular majesty. 
 For him such emotions had had their day, and his 
 present feeling was one of bitter disappointment. 
 Like Lacordaire, he seems to have lost some of his 
 confidence in the policy of the Avenir and of the 
 appeal to Borne, but his motives were very different 
 from those of the young and enthusiastic priest. 
 On January 8, shortly after their arrival in the 
 Eternal City, he wrote to Gerbet : ' As to our doc- 
 trines, every one here . . . admits that there is no- 
 thing in them which can lead to a condemnation. 
 We are drawing up a memoir dealing with the whole 
 business. The matter would soon be ended were it 
 not for political considerations. It is these unfor- 
 tunate politics which are everywhere destroying re- 
 ligion.' And about three weeks later : — 
 
 The Pope is a good religious man, who knows nothing 
 
206 THE ABRE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 of the things of the world. His real and deep piety inspires 
 him with a passive courage — that is to say, he would suffer 
 anything rather than violate his conscience. But at the 
 same time it would be impossible to be more wanting in 
 active courage. . . . 
 
 Imagine to yourself an old man surrounded by men, 
 mu>ny of them tonsured, who manage his affairs ; men to 
 whom religion is as indifferent as it is to all the cabinets of 
 Europe — ambitious, covetous, avaricious . . . blind and 
 infatuated as the eunuchs of the lower empire. Such is the 
 government of this country, such are the men who have 
 everything in their hands, and who daily sacrifice the Church 
 to the vilest interests and the most vainly conceived of their 
 temporal affairs. They count the peoples for nothing, and 
 see in the world only ten or a dozen men who have become, 
 because they are powerful, or seem so, their true divinities. 
 And, in spite of this, everything is sinking or passing away, 
 everything is dying. There are a few virtuous people who 
 see this and who groan at it ; but the remedy, where is it'? 
 I cannot see it. That is why I am convinced that God will 
 take upon Himself the saving of what men are destroying, 
 and that something great is going to happen. In a few 
 years, perhaps, the Church, freed by extraordinary events, 
 will regenerate itself, and till then there is nothing to hope 
 for. Matters are hurrying towards an immense reform . . . 
 which will begin in the next pontificate. ... I know of 
 nothing more depressing than what we are here forced to 
 look upon. Only the divine promises can make it bearable. 
 . . . This being so, it is very doubtful whether we shall be able 
 to go on with the Avenir. 
 
 It was in no very hopeful mood, then, that 
 Lamennais set himself to work the business of the 
 Avenir in Eome. Whatever may have been the 
 facts of the case, he was fully convinced that the 
 representatives of the Powers had been before him, 
 
APPEAL TO ROME. CONDEMNATION 207 
 
 and that the cause of the movement would become 
 hopelessly entangled in the network of diplomatic 
 intrigue which surrounded the luckless pontiff. So far 
 as he could see, the authorities were, on the whole, 
 favourably disposed. It was strongly hinted to him 
 that his presence in Rome was embarrassing to the 
 Pope ; that he would do well to return to France. 
 It was pointed out to him that the Avenir had 
 been allowed to run on for more than a year without 
 any sign of official disapprobation from the central 
 authorities ; that it was simple madness to expect 
 the Holy See to put itself at the head of a movement 
 which had still to win for itself a title to recognition 
 as a legitimate outcome of the evolution of human 
 society. That such an open mark of favour from the 
 father of all Christians would be a flagrant violation of 
 the rights of conscience, an act of persecution against 
 that vast majority who still held to the old ideas. 
 
 That both Lamennais and Lacordaire realised 
 this there can be no doubt, but it is equally evident 
 that they differed fundamentally in the meaning 
 which they gave to the movement in which both had 
 played so prominent a part. To the younger man 
 the thing they had been contending for was liberty, 
 a©d,-above all things, liberty in matters of religion. 
 Years afterwards he described the scene in which he 
 Joad proposed to Lamennais the pilgrimage to Eome, 
 and he added : He should have answered : — 
 
 My dear child, you do not know what you propose. 
 Eome is not in the habit of deciding on opinions which God 
 has given over to the reason of man, and, above all, opinions 
 
208 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 produced by the variations of local politics. Did O'Connell go 
 to Eome to consult the Pope ? In the midst of that terrible 
 agitation for national and religious liberty in Ireland did the 
 Pope intervene to direct or to put a stop to it ? No ! Eome 
 was silent, and O'Connell spoke for thirty years. We cannot 
 do as he did, for we have not, as he had, a unanimous nation 
 at our backs. ... Time has not been with us ; let it go by. 
 Our thoughts will germinate in the minds of men . . . and 
 one day, perhaps soon, during our lives or afterwards, we 
 shall see our ideas rising from their ashes, schools freely 
 opened, religious communities established in every corner of 
 the land, and the hatred which now assails us turned into 
 that goodwill . . . which is the true guarantee of all the 
 liberties. 
 
 Lamennais, on the other hand, had gone further 
 than this. In the struggle for liberty he had come 
 to realise that there was another question of infinitely 
 greater importance, and which seemed to demand an 
 immediate solution. He had been forced to accept 
 as allies that vast multitude of the toiling people, the 
 outcasts of society, and, from recognising their sym- 
 pathy with the movement of the Avenir, his soul 
 had gone out to them in all the deep compassion 
 of his yearning, imaginative nature. This idea had 
 obtained so complete a mastery over him, that it had 
 become an integral part of his religion. Living in 
 the Eternal City, face to face with the mitred majesty 
 of the successors of St. Peter, he seems to have 
 resolved to risk everything rather than allow the 
 Church to draw back from a position which he con- 
 sidered to have devolved upon it from its divine insti- 
 tution. He thoroughly realised the difficulty of the 
 situation. Everything he saw in Eome tended to 
 
APPEAL TO ROME. CONDEMNATION 209 
 
 convince him that the authorities wished to avoid a 
 decisive explanation. The demands of the pilgrims 
 for an interview with the Holy Father were met by 
 continued procrastination, and it is probable that this 
 had a considerable influence in the working of his 
 powerful imagination. There are evidences of this in 
 his correspondence, but it is most clearly seen in a 
 passage from an unfinished work, written about this 
 time and published some years later, at the end of the 
 Affaires tie Rome. It is the first of those apocalyptic 
 utterances of which, more will be said hereafter : — 
 
 Centuries upon centuries had passed ; it was upon the 
 evening of one of those long days which are the days of 
 God ; the sun, encircled as in a winding sheet hy clouds, 
 had gone below the horizon, night was coming on ; a heavy, 
 stifling atmosphere hung over the earth ; wearied flocks, the 
 peoples, lay in those vast parks which are called empires, 
 kingdoms, and from time to time strained their necks, 
 bruised by the yoke, seeking a little air to cool their burning 
 throats ; and these parks were guarded by armed men ; and 
 whenever there was the least movement, one heard the 
 clanking of chains. 
 
 And as I looked, my soul, stupefied, was troubled, and 
 I heard a voice : ' Son of Adam, what dost thou see ? ' 
 And, as I did not answer : ' Thou seest the peoples redeemed 
 by Christ.' 
 
 And on the top of a steep hill I beheld an immense 
 building, shining as with a thousand fires; and I 1 went up 
 to it, and my eyes, dazzled by the reflected light of gold, of 
 crystal, and of precious stones, perceived, sitting on thrones 
 draped with purple, men whose heads were crowned with 
 diadems ; and, looking towards the plain, they said : ' All 
 that sleeps there is ours ! ' And at their feet were other 
 men, humbly bent before them, and women, half naked ; 
 
 P 
 
210 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 and these; their eyes fixed on the crowned men, seemed to 
 watch for a gesture, a look ; then, kneeling down, they said : 
 ' All that sleeps there is yours ! ' 
 
 And sumptuous tables were got ready, spread with 
 delicious viands and exquisite wines ; and the crowned men 
 and the bowing men, and the half naked women, sat them- 
 selves down around these tables, and the perfume of the 
 flowers and a beautiful melody made their senses drunk, and 
 they floated softly in a cloud of voluptuousness. From time 
 to time was heard from without the harsh sound of clanking 
 irons, and they laughed. . . . 
 
 Then the crowned men retired to another place, and 
 their faces became darkened, and they began, in secret, to 
 take council together. Suspicion, anger, hatred were in 
 their eyes, and they smiled with their lips and embraced 
 one another. Suddenly there was a movement among the 
 armed men who guarded the parks, and a terrible cry went 
 forth from the multitude, and the sky was reddened with 
 fire, and rivers of blood flowed over the plain, and women, 
 clasping to their breasts their little children, fled, and at 
 every step their feet stumbled over dead bodies. Then I 
 turned towards the crowned men, who had smiled and 
 embraced one another. The crown had fallen from the heads 
 of some of them ; the others cried : ' It is well, our name 
 will be for ever glorious ! ' And they divided amongst them- 
 selves all that had escaped from the ravages of fire and 
 sword. 
 
 And I looked at that, and my soul, stupefied, was 
 troubled, and I heard a voice : ' Son of Adam, what dost 
 thou see ? ' And, as I did not answer : ' Thou seest the 
 anointed of the Lord, the temporal vicars of Christ.' 
 
 And my swollen breast was heaving, and I went down 
 into the plain and sought a refuge from the vision which 
 pursued me ; and I met some old men, clothed in priestly 
 robes ; they held in one hand a purse full of gold, and in 
 the other the mysterious book of doctrine and of prayer, and 
 every page of the book was marked with the seal of the 
 
APPEAL TO ROME. CONDEMXATION 211 
 
 crowned men ; and the old men said : ' Peoples, obey the 
 crowned men ; your property, your lives are theirs ; what- 
 ever they do, you must suffer it without resisting, without 
 murmuring.' ... 
 
 And I looked at that, and my soul, stupefied, was 
 troubled, and I heard a voice : ' Son of Adam, what dost 
 thou see ? ' And, as I did not answer : ' Thou seest the 
 pontiffs of Christ.' 
 
 And I went into the Temple ; I wandered through its 
 long, deserted aisles ; the ascending arches were lost in the 
 darkness ; a silent horror took possession of me, a cold 
 shudder ran through me. At the end of the sanctuary, on 
 an altar, lit by a dying lamp, I perceived, as it were, a 
 shadow something unutterable, a divine form which seemed 
 bent under a load of chains. , 
 
 And as I looked, I trembled ; my brow was damped by 
 a cold sweat, and I heard a voice : ' Son of Adam, what dost 
 thou see ? ' And, as I did not answer : ' Thou seest,' it 
 said, ' the Christ, the Kedeemer of the world.' 
 
 Then I fell upon my face upon the earth ; my life in 
 time was, as it were, suspended, and what passed in me has 
 no name which can be uttered by human tongue. 
 
 Such an outburst leaves no doubt on the mind as 
 to the attitude of the Abbe" de Lamennais in demand- 
 ing a judgment from Home on the doctrines of the 
 Aveniv. But Rome seemed unwilling to commit 
 itself. A memoir had been drawn up by Lacordaire 
 and presented to the Holy See, in which the prin- 
 ciples of the movement were set forth, but no intima- 
 tion had reached the pilgrims that they were either 
 condemned or approved. They had demanded an 
 audience of the Pope, but the authorities did not 
 seem inclined to grant it, and put the matter off 
 from day to day. After waiting for some weeks, 
 
212 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 Lamennais became impatient, arid redoubled his 
 efforts. As a result a partial concession was made, 
 and an interview was promised on condition that the 
 pilgrims should not mention the business which had 
 brought them to Borne. I borrow the traditional 
 account of it from Mgr. Eicard. 
 
 On March 13 the three champions of liberty were 
 admitted to the presence of the Holy Father : — 
 
 Lamennais fell on his knees. . . . Gregory XVI. raised 
 him up immediately, with a smile of kindness. He held in 
 his hand a large snuff-box . . . and, after slowly opening it, 
 he said quietly, ' Do you take snuff '? ' 
 
 The Abbe took a pinch for politeness sake, inwardly 
 cursing, and saying that he had not come to take snuff. 
 
 The Pope then took one himself, gravely sniffed it in, 
 not without soiling the front of his cassock. 
 
 ' Are you fond of art ? ' he said abruptly. 
 
 ' At times, Holy Father.' 
 
 ' At times ? That is not enough.' 
 
 ' I like it in its place,' said Lamennais, slightly 
 angered . . . ' but just now . . . 
 
 ' You know it is what is best in Borne,' said the Pope, 
 quickly. 
 
 ' After something else,' replied Lamennais, ' and, if 
 your Holiness will permit me . . . ' 
 
 The Pope interrupted him. 
 
 ' Have you been to see the Church of St. Peter's 
 Chains, Monsieur l'Abbe ? ' 
 
 ' I have, Holy Father ; and would to God it was the 
 only church in chains in the Christian world ! ' 
 
 The Pope pretended not to notice the allusion. 
 
 ' I suppose you saw Michael Angelo's Moses ? ' 
 
 ' It is his masterpiece ; but, for my part, with all the 
 devotion . . .' 
 
 ' I think you are wrong,' said the Pope, with warmth. 
 
APPEAL TO ROME. CONDEMNATION 213 
 
 ' I can show you another masterpiece of Michael Angelo, 
 which can well bear comparison with it.' 
 
 And he took from his writing-table a silver statuette. 
 
 ' Do you not recognise the claw of the lion ? ' he added, 
 handing it to Lamennais. 
 
 Lamennais looked at it with a far-off air, as a man 
 preoccupied with another thought. 
 
 ' Examine it carefully,' said "the Pope. 
 
 Lamennais looked at it again. 
 
 ' I should like to be able to make you a present of it,' 
 continued the Pope, ' but nothing here belongs to me ; I 
 have received, and I must hand it on to my successor.' 
 
 He laid his hand on Lamennais' head. 
 
 ' Farewell, Monsieur 1' Abbe.' 
 
 And he gave him his benediction. 
 
 Lamennais was very angry. He had come to 
 Eome, hoping against hope that the pilgrimage might 
 result in winning for the Church a place in that 
 future which seemed to him to be inevitable ; and 
 now his worst fears seemed to have been realised. 
 Nevertheless he wrote immediately to the Abbd 
 Jean : — 
 
 We have just come back from an audience with the 
 Pope, who received us very kindly, and who presented each 
 of us with a medal. He also gave me his benediction for 
 you, and for the children who are in your schools. . . . 
 You will get this rather late, as I am sending it by 
 Lacordaire, who is leaving the day after to-morroio' for 
 Paris. 
 
 This last sentence is especially important, as it 
 compels us considerably to modify the account 
 which has come down to us of the separation which 
 now took place between Lamennais and Lacordaire. 
 
214 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 Cardinal Pacca, it is said, wrote to the pilgrims, 
 advising them to return to France, and to trust to 
 time to justify their ideas, and hinting that the Holy 
 Bee would rather leave the matter open for the pre- 
 sent. The letter was received by Lacordaire, who 
 brought it to Lamennais. The latter read it and 
 announced his intention of remaining in Home. His 
 young disciple was very much shocked at his attitude, 
 and tried to turn him from his resolution, pointing 
 out that either they should not have come to Kome, 
 or they should have been prepared to submit to the 
 decision of the Sovereign Pontiff, whatever it might 
 be. The discussion ended in an open rupture, and 
 Lacordaire decided to return alone to Prance. That 
 something of this kind happened it seems impossible 
 seriously to doubt, and if we had to rely exclusively 
 on the later writings of Lacordaire, we might con- 
 clude that the description was in no way exaggerated. 
 But this letter would seem to point to the fact that 
 the quarrel was not so serious as it seemed when 
 judged by the light of later events, or at any rate 
 that it did not appear so to Lamennais. This view 
 is, I think, fully confirmed by a letter which he wrote 
 shqrtly afterwards to Gerbet, in which he mentions 
 the fact that an examination of the disputed doc- 
 trines has been promised, and refers him, for further 
 details, to Lacordaire, whom he will shortly see. 
 Such confidence in one with whom he was in a state 
 of open rupture would seem, to say the least of it, 
 imprudent. 
 
 In any case, Lacordaire now returned to France, 
 
APPEAL TO ROME. CONDEMNATION 215 
 
 and, as Montalembert had decided to go on a visit to 
 Naples, Lamennais accepted an invitation from ' the 
 excellent Father Ventura, then General of the Thea- 
 tins,' to stay with him at Frascati. It was While 
 living here, in the quiet seclusion of the cloister, that 
 he wrote the greater part of that burning denuncia- 
 tion of the ills of the Church and of society, already 
 alluded to, which did not see the light till many 
 years afterwards, when it appeared at the end of the 
 Affaires de Rome, the last act of the terrible drama 
 which was even now being enacted. 
 
 Thus he gave vent to his feelings while waiting 
 for a decision from Rome. J3ut he waited in vain. 
 He was aroused to a full realisation of the critical 
 position in which he stood by the publication of the 
 letter of Gregory XVI. to the Polish bishops, in 
 which the unsuccessful patriots were condemned, and 
 informed that the schismatic Tsar was their lawful 
 sovereign, and that they were morally bound to sub- 
 mit to him. At length he resolved to return with 
 Montalembert to France, announcing his intention 
 of going on with the Avenir. 
 
 There is a note of sadness in his description of 
 that farewell scene, when he passed out for ever 
 through the gates of the Eternal City : — 
 
 Our resolution once formed [lie tells us in the Affaires], 
 we did not take long in preparing for our journey. It was 
 an evening in July. From the heights dominating the 
 valley through which winds the Tiber, we looked back 
 sadly for the last time on the Eternal City. The fiery rays 
 of the dying sun lit up the cupola of St. Peter's, fitting 
 image of the ancient glory of the papacy. Little by little 
 
216 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 surrounding objects, losing their colour, were disappearing 
 into the darkness. In the uncertain twilight we could just 
 see, here and there as we passed along, the remains of 
 tombs standing by the roadside. Not a breath relieved the 
 heaviness of the atmosphere, not a blade of grass moved in 
 the general stillness ; no noise was . heard, but the dry, 
 monotonous grating of our travelling carriage as it advanced 
 slowly over the deserted plain. 
 
 We need not dwell on the details of this journey, 
 the story of which' is beautifully set forth in the 
 pages of the Affaires de Home. Suffice it to say that 
 the two travellers arrived at Munich in August, and 
 were enthusiastically received by the leading citizens 
 of that place. There they were joined by Lacordaire, 
 who happened to arrive during their stay, so that the 
 party presented no appearance of rupture to the out- 
 side world. 
 
 Lamennais seems to have been very favourably 
 impressed by the attitude of those whom they met. 
 ' Our stay here,' he wrote to Gerbet, ' will have been 
 very useful to us ; it has resulted in sure and valuable 
 friendships.' So high, indeed, did they stand in 
 public estimation, that they were entertained at a 
 banquet given in their honour, at which most of the 
 leading men in Bavaria were present, amongst others 
 a young and rising ecclesiastic called Dollinger. 
 These things in themselves are worthy of note, but 
 the banquet owes its chief interest to an event which 
 occurred in the midst of the festivities. The presi- 
 dent had just called on the assembled guests to drink 
 to the union of French and German Catholics. The 
 toast was received with rounds of applause, and the 
 
APPEAL TO ROME. CONDEMNATION 217 
 
 noise had hardly died away when Lamennais was 
 seen to get up and leave the room, called away by a 
 sudden message whispered to him by one of the 
 servants. When he got outside, a sealed packet, 
 together with a letter, was delivered to him. This 
 -last jyas in the handwriting of Cardinal Pacca, and a 
 glance at its contents revealed to him the meaning 
 of the message. He returned to his place very much 
 agitated, and there was an awkward silence among 
 the guests, but he said nothing. After dinner, as soon 
 as he found himself alone with his disciples, he told 
 them that the Aveuir had been condemned. He had 
 received the encyclical Mi rani van. 
 
 The blow must have been a terrible one. He had 
 reached the age of fifty, and, with a mature mind, 
 had formed an ideal of the true meaning of the 
 Catholic religion. To him this ideal had become a 
 necessary outcome of his faith. His companions 
 were younger men, and had joined the movement as 
 already existing, rather than as being the only pos- 
 sible expression of their aspirations. To Lamennais 
 it was everything, the slow creation of the long years 
 of a painful, struggling life. We have seen that he 
 had given to it a deeper meaning than they had. He 
 had realised that beyond the mere visible expressions 
 of social organisation lay the democracy which had 
 been slowly evolved under the influence of the Chris- 
 tian ideal. He had faced the problem forced on him 
 by this fact, and he had thought that the Church 
 might place itself at the head of this power of the 
 future, and might thus win for itself a place in the 
 
218 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 modern world ; and now all his hopes were shattered, 
 and his whole life must have appeared to him empty 
 and meaningless. Had he been carried away by a 
 sudden impulse of anger we could hardly have blamed 
 him, for the groundwork of self-restraint might well 
 have seemed to have been snatched away from him. 
 It is only when we have grasped this fact that we 
 can realise the almost superhuman heroism of his 
 advice to his trembling and perplexed disciples : 'We 
 must not hesitate to submit.' 
 
 And when they got back to Paris he drew up a 
 formula of submission, which was signed by all of 
 them : — 
 
 The undersigned, editors of the Avenir, members of the 
 Agcnce pour la Defense de laLiberti Bcligieuse, being now in 
 Paris, convinced by the encyclical letter of the sovereign 
 pontiff, Gregory XVI., of August 15, 1832, that it is impos- 
 sible for them to proceed further without placing themselves 
 in opposition to the expressed will of him whom God has 
 charged with the government of His Church, believe that it 
 is their duty as Catholics to make this declaration, that, 
 respectfully submitting themselves to the supreme authority 
 of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, they quit the arena in which 
 for the last two years they have loyally struggled. They 
 hereby call upon their colleagues to give a similar example 
 of Christian submission. 
 
 Consequently — 
 
 1. The Avenir, provisionally suspended since November 
 15, is now finally withdrawn. 
 
 2. The Agence Generate pour la Defense de la Liberie 
 Religieuse is hereby dissolved. All business already begun 
 will be brought to a close, and its accounts liquidated, with 
 the shortest possible delay. 
 
219 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 Thus, after giving himself absolutely to the cause 
 which he believed to be just, after an almost super- 
 human struggle, in which he had staked health, ease, 
 reputation, and peace of mind, he found himself dis- 
 owned by that power in whose interest he had sacri- 
 ficed everything. The blow was one which might 
 well have shattered the faith of a colder and less 
 sensitive nature. But Lamennais, appearances not- 
 withstanding, was not devoid of that element of 
 stability which moulds the characters of the great 
 teachers of humanity. He resisted the impulse of 
 the moment, and submitted to what he considered a 
 dictate of the universal reason. I cannot insist too 
 strongly on the heroism of an act which would have 
 been impossible had it not sprung from the deepest 
 conviction. But the strain was beyond the power 
 of human endurance. He tried to persuade himself 
 that he was free from future obligation to a society 
 determined to destroy itself, that his public career 
 was ended, and that he might now rest from his 
 labours, trusting only that God would save His Church 
 from the general destruction. But he did not sue- 
 
220 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 ceed in this. Now, as formerly, his genius refused 
 to be tamed, and rebelled against a decree of perpetual 
 inaction : — 
 
 I remember [says Ste-Beuve] that when the Abbe 
 Lacordaire returned from Rome with M. de Lamennais, I 
 went to call on them at their rooms in the Rue de Vaugirard. 
 I met M. de Lamennais in a room on the ground floor, and 
 he spoke to me about what had happened in Rome, and of the 
 Pope, in a way which startled me, considering that he openly 
 made his submission. He spoke of the Pope as one of those 
 men who are destined to bring about great and desperate 
 remedies. But when I went upstairs and saw Lacordaire I 
 was struck by the contrast ; he spoke reservedly, and with 
 submission, of the misfortune which had happened to them, 
 and I remember, amongst other things, that he made use of 
 the simile of a ' seed, which, even if fertile, must be kept 
 back in its growth, that it may sleep for a whole winter 
 under the ground.' . . . Comparing these things, I con- 
 cluded that the relations between the first floor and the rez- 
 de-chaussSe were not very cordial. 
 
 And so we are not surprised to find that the cor- 
 respondence almost immediately begins to show signs 
 of the decisive struggle which now raged in his inmost 
 soul, rending him, and gradually obliterating the old 
 landmarks : — 
 
 Quos vult perdere, Jupiter dementat [he wrote to M. de 
 Coriolis on September 15, 1832]. These words are terribly 
 true, and every moment now brings them home to us. 
 Emperors, Tsars, absolute monarchs, constitutional kings, 
 see how they hurry along, they seem to be pressed for time. 
 ... Ah ! what a magnificent procession ! Stand aside a 
 little, please, that I may see it pass. Farewell, good people ! 
 Pleasant journey !— since you are contented, so am I. After 
 all, I think you are right ; henceforward, what can you do 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 221 
 
 with the people, and of what use can you be to them? 
 Your mutual relations are becoming rather strained; you 
 massacre them, and they cut off your heads. This sort of 
 thing becomes rather tiresome in the long run ; go away, 
 and take your heads with you ! It is much the wisest 
 course. Do not listen to those bad people who tell you that 
 an imperial, royal, princely or a ducal head is valuable only 
 for what rests on it, and not for what is in it. That the 
 contents are not worth much, I admit ; but the other is 
 worth still less just now. Andate dunque, andate, e buon 
 viaggio. 
 
 We shudder as we turn from the quiet irony of 
 this letter to. the fierce passion which compelled him 
 to write, some weeks later, to Madame de Senfft : — 
 
 Catholicism was my life, because it is that of humanity ; 
 I wished to defend it, I wished to raise it from the depths 
 into which it was sinking deeper every day ; nothing was 
 easier. The bishops found that it did not suit them. Eome 
 remained ; I went there, and I beheld the foulest cesspool 
 which has ever sullied the eyes of man. The vast drain of 
 the Tarquins would be too narrow to give passage to so much 
 uncleanness. There, there is no god but interest. There 
 they would sell the peoples, they would sell the human race, 
 they would sell the three Persons of the Holy Trinity, 
 separately or in one lot, for a piece of land, or for a few 
 piastres. I saw that, and I said to myself, ' This evil is 
 beyond the power of man,' and I turned away my eyes in 
 horror and in fear. Do not lose yourself in the sterile and 
 ridiculous speculations of the politics of the hour. The 
 thing that is being prepared is not one of those changes 
 which are ended by compromises, and which treaties can 
 regulate, but a total overthrow of the world, a complete and 
 universal transformation of society. Good-bye to the past, 
 good-bye for ever ; nothing of it will remain. The day of 
 justice is come, a terrible day, in which it will be rendered 
 
222 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 to every man according to his works, but a day of glory for 
 God, who will take once more into His hand the reins of the 
 world — a day of hope for the human race, which, under the 
 guidance of the one true King, will set out once more towards 
 new and greater destinies. 
 
 These facts being noted, we can appreciate the 
 terrible drama which is about to be enacted before 
 us. The central figure, the hero of countless battlings 
 with himself and with the world, has now arrived at 
 an age when most men begin to look back fondly to 
 work done, and to dwell complacently on a life which 
 has not been wholly useless. 
 
 We have followed him, step by step, from his 
 unknown childhood in the wilds of Brittany ; we 
 have struggled with him ; we have felt ourselves 
 moved to deep sympathy in the uncertain moments 
 of his career. And now that he has reached the 
 highest point, has won his way to a position among 
 the world's great men, we are perplexed. Oppressed 
 by a vague feeling of uneasiness, we know not what 
 to make of it. We see him standing, uncertain, 
 crushed by a load of disappointment, utterly despon- 
 dent. We try to understand him, we wish that, pene- 
 trating into the inmost recesses of his wounded soul, 
 we could force it to yield up its secret, and once 
 more sympathise with him, perhaps console him, but 
 we cannot. He is an enigma, as impenetrable as the 
 rocks on his native shore. 
 
 Wandering in thought over the ruins of his past, 
 his mind may have been disturbed by the faint 
 memory of a far off scene, on the storm lashed ram- 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 223 
 
 parts of St. Malo, when there stood on those walls, 
 holding the hand of his companion, a little boy of 
 eight years old. His thin, pale face was turned to- 
 wards the sea as he watched with deep, sad eyes the 
 fierce battlings of wind and wave, and listened to the 
 angry roaring of the waters. He looked and listened, 
 and, in his childlike mind, he seemed to ponder 
 some thought beyond his years ; then, turning scorn- 
 fully towards the groups of men and women standing 
 round, he said to his companion : ' lis regardent ce 
 que je regarde, mais ils ne voient pas ce que je vois.' 
 Perhaps, too, he had begun to realise that that scene 
 was a picture of his own life. - 
 
 And to his contemporaries he was as enigmatical 
 as he is to us. The news of the condemnation was 
 received by the Gallican party with a shout of 
 applause, and it was confidently expected that the 
 blow would be fatal, not only to the Liberal but to the 
 Ultramontane movement. We can imagine their 
 surprise and consternation when they heard that 
 Lamennais had submitted without the smallest hesi- 
 tation. They had charitably supposed, I do not say 
 hoped, that he would, in the heat of the moment, be 
 betrayed into some act of resistance, if not of open 
 rebellion. They had realised that the slightest indi- 
 cation of this would be sufficient to destroy the 
 movement he represented, which was based on the 
 most thorough recognition of the prerogatives of the 
 Holy See. Lamennais, by his attitude, had com- 
 pletely defeated them; the Ultramontane position 
 seemed stronger than ever, and even in those matters 
 
224 THE ABRE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 which had been dealt with in the encyclical, Eoyalism 
 could hardly hope for anything but hatred from those 
 whose condemnation it had brought about. 
 
 Then began an agitation almost unexampled in 
 the history of human folly. That vast crowd of 
 empty-headed devotees which formed the moral basis 
 of the ecclesiastico-political establishment, seeing 
 nothing of the heroism of the attitude of the Ultra- 
 montane leader, conscious only that their formidable 
 opponent was still staggering under the blow which 
 had been dealt to him, and that the opportunity was 
 favourable, brought to bear on him all the arts of 
 pious mediocrity, and strove to drive him to rebellion 
 by the never ending insinuations of conscientious 
 slander. Like gnats around the helpless form of a 
 wounded lion, they swarmed about him, maddening 
 him with their incessant buzzings, causing his sensi- 
 tive skin to writhe in impotent irritation from the 
 injected poison of innumerable though tiny stings ; 
 and they were urged to this, as M. Eoussel says, by a 
 double motive — ' that he was a lion, and that he was 
 wounded.' 
 
 Lamennais describes this in his Affaires de 
 Borne : — 
 
 Hardly had our declaration been published, when sayings, 
 expressive of mistrust and anger, began to be whispered 
 about. It was not complete enough, explicit enough, it was 
 too like the respectful silence of the Jansenists. Intrigues 
 were set on foot, calumny was quietly sown, timorous souls 
 were disturbed by those charitable insinuations, always 
 uttered in a sorrowful tone, ' which one does not want to 
 believe, which one does not believe ; and yet, so many people 
 repeat them ! ' 
 
THE VOICE OP THE PEOPLE 225 
 
 Then came direct provocations, insults, public misrepre- 
 sentations. They hoped in this way to draw us into discus- 
 sions as delicate as they were dangerous in our position. We 
 saw the trap and avoided it by keeping silence. Their anger 
 was redoubled. They had not expected such moderation, 
 and — why should I not say it ? — a patience which seemed like 
 contempt. 
 
 Under, the circumstances only one course was 
 possible. The Avenir had been condemned, because 
 society was not yet ready for the ideas which it 
 represented. It remained, then, to educate the rising 
 generation, to prepare his young disciples to take their 
 place in that future which was slowly but surely being 
 matured. With this object, Lamennais returned to 
 La ChSnaie, and there, with Gerbet and Lacordaire, 
 he awaited the arrival of his young neophytes. But, 
 even in this small beginning, the signs of approaching 
 trouble were not altogether absent, and the three 
 friends must have been oppressed by a vague feeling 
 of sadness and uncertainty as they strolled together 
 through the shady walks, or sat of an evening in the 
 drawing-room of that house, the walls of which, 
 mysterious in their solitude, gave back the echo of 
 the winds, which sighed around in the leafy stillness 
 of the forest ; for Lamennais had now begun to 
 realise that a rupture between himself and Lacor- 
 daire was inevitable, and it was clear to all who were 
 intimate with him that the fatal day was not far off. 
 
 They avoided an explanation for the present, and, 
 as the pupils arrived, they were- received by the 
 three friends, who seemed to them absolutely at one 
 in the objects which they had in view. But such 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 reticence only added to the awkwardness of the 
 situation : — 
 
 The house [says Lacordaire, in one of his later writings] 
 resumed its accustomed aspect, a blending of solitude 
 with animation ; but if the woods were the same in their 
 silence and their storms ; if the Breton sky was unchanged, 
 it was not so with the heart of the master. The wound was 
 still open, and the dagger was daily turned in it by the hand 
 which might have snatched it out and put in its place the 
 balm of God. Terrible clouds passed and repassed over that 
 forehead from which peace had departed. Broken and 
 menacing words came from those lips which had formerly 
 poured forth the sweetness of the Gospel ; it sometimes 
 seemed to me that Saul was before me, but none of us had 
 the harp of David to calm these sudden outbursts. . . , 
 Terror and the gloomiest forebodings slowly took possession 
 of my wounded soul. 
 
 Such a state of things could not last. 
 
 Maurice de Guerin arrived in December 1832, 
 and he immediately wrote to his father, describing the 
 almost paternal affection of M. Feli, and the kind 
 welcome he had received from MM. Gerbet and Lacor- 
 daire. It is evident that he sees no sign of the fatal 
 discord which divides the nucleus of the little com- 
 munity. And yet shortly afterwards he had to write 
 to his sinter : ' M. Lacordaire left us two days after 
 my arrival ; pressing business called him to Paris.' 
 Little did he think, when he wrote these words, that 
 the two friends were now parted for ever. 
 
 The incident which led to this took place one day 
 at the mid-day meal. The conversation had un- 
 fortunately been turned to political questions, and 
 
TI1E VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 227 
 
 Lamennais, as usual, taking the lead, was soon lost in 
 a kind of running commentary on the parties which 
 divided France. In the course of this, he spoke sar- 
 castically of the exiled royal family. Lacordaire was 
 shocked, and apparently an unpleasant discussion 
 ensued, for after luncheon the young priest retired to 
 his room, where he wrote a long letter to his leader, 
 which he addressed, and laid on the table. He then 
 put together his things and went away without a 
 word to anyone. His soul was filled with sadness as 
 he walked through those solitary woods teeming with 
 so many memories. 'From a certain spot,' he says, 
 * I saw him through the trees surrounded by his young 
 disciples. I stood still, and looked for the last time 
 on that unhappy great man. And then I went on, 
 not knowing whither I was going. . . . Everything 
 seemed to be crumbling away around me.' 
 
 Later in the day the letter was brought to Lamen- 
 nais, and when he read it he realised that the blow 
 which had been impending for so long had fallen, that 
 the greatest of his disciples had left him : — 
 
 This afternoon [said the writer] I am leaving La 
 Chenaie. Honour compels me to it, for T am convinced that 
 henceforth my life must be useless to you on account of the 
 difference in our opinions on the Church and society. . . . 
 
 1 believe that neither during my life, nor for a long time 
 after it, can the Republic be established in France or in any 
 other country in Europe, and I cannot adhere to a system 
 which takes for granted a contrary conviction. 
 
 Only in heaven will you know how I have suffered 
 during the last year at the very thought of causing you pain. 
 
228 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 In all my hesitations, my difficulties, my contradictions, I 
 have thought only of you ; and however hard my life may be, 
 no regret will ever equal those that I have felt. I leave 
 you now at peace with the Church, greater in public estima- 
 tion than you have ever been, so far above your enemies that 
 they are as nothing in comparison. . . . 
 
 I do not know as yet what will become of me. . . . 
 Wherever I am, you shall have proof of the respect and 
 attachment which I shall always have for you, the expression 
 of which I beg you to accept, for it comes from a broken 
 heart. 
 
 Deeply as he felt it, Lamennais concealed this 
 sad event from his young companions, and the in- 
 mates of La Chfinaie gradually settled down to their 
 work, not however without some misgivings as to 
 the attitude of the master. Francois Dubreil de 
 Marzan, for instance, had written in September to 
 M. Houet :— 
 
 Only this evening I received the sad news of the 
 dissolution of the Atjence and the final discontinuance of the 
 Avcnir ; with it I may almost say that I received the dis- 
 solution of my hopes, forgive the expression. I who owed 
 my life to these doctrines, which I thought were those of 
 salvation, must we abandon them ? If so, what are we to 
 believe? What does all this mean? Is it chaos, is night 
 coming on, or is the darkness which was already there 
 becoming deeper? ... In heaven's name write me some- 
 thing, give me some words of hope if you can. . . . Tell me 
 how we stand. Oh ! in heaven's name a word from you . . . 
 you will take a heavy load from my heart ! But I was for- 
 getting — you promised to come and see me ; such a visit 
 would be a godsend to me just now. I want some one who 
 can say to me, All is not lost! There is still hope. But I 
 shudder when I think that you may not be able to come; at 
 least write to me, not to lose my faith. . . . 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 229 
 
 And so he continues, pouring out his sorrows 
 and his difficulties to his sympathetic friend, in a 
 letter the language of which, broken and confused, is 
 an evidence of the depth of feeling which inspired it. 
 
 Then there were petty persecutions, hints that 
 the members of the little community were not sincere 
 in their submission to the encyclical, or assertions 
 that such submission meant more than they intended 
 it to mean. Houet himself was attacked, and even 
 the careful Rohrbacher did not escape suspicion, and 
 had to write a formal retractation. But this kind of 
 thing did not prevent them from carrying out the 
 objects which they had set before themselves, and 
 La Chenaie soon resumed its activity as the head- 
 quarters of the Order of St. Peter. 
 
 I have already alluded in a former chapter to the 
 mode of life which characterised this hermitage ou 
 the borders of the forest of Coetquen, as set forth in 
 the writings of Maurice de Guerin. We are now in 
 a position to appreciate the pathetic meaning which 
 lies hidden under the apparent artlessness of his 
 style. The tender, almost paternal reception given 
 to each of the young students on their arrival, the 
 evident emotion with which the master noticed the 
 increase of his ' little family,' made a profound im- 
 pression on Guerin. He realised that to place him- 
 self under the direction of the solitary of La Chenaie, 
 was to involve himself in the uncertain though 
 brilliant fortunes of a man whose every action was 
 being watched just then with breathless interest 
 by a crowd of sympathisers in every part of the 
 
230 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 civilised world. Hitherto he had known Lamennais 
 only by reputation, and his mind was filled with a 
 mysterious awe of him : — 
 
 For the last three weeks [he wrote on Christmas-day, 1832] 
 I have heen living the life of a recluse, but a voluntary one, 
 finding in the desert what . is not often seen there . . . the 
 most lovable society and the sincerest friendship. There are 
 four of us here fleeing the world and seeking with the Master 
 rest and light. . . . When first I came into the presence of 
 M. Feli (for so we call him in our family circle) I was seized 
 with that mysterious trembling which always results from 
 the contact with divine things and great men, but this soon 
 gave place to confidence and sympathy, and I felt that our 
 imagination gives us a very false idea of great souls when 
 it represents them as inaccessible and in some sort to be 
 dreaded by the vulgar ; far from it. Glory seen close at hand 
 is kind and simple as a child, and no one is easier to get on 
 with than a great man. M. Feli forced me, so to speak, to 
 forget his fame in his paternal kindness and the tender 
 familiarity of his conversation. His whole genius gives 
 utterance to itself in sympathy. 
 
 Never, perhaps, in the history of religious insti- 
 tutions has there been got together a body of men 
 so varied in their genius and in their aspirations as 
 those who now gathered round the man in whom was 
 centred all that was best in the thought of his time. 
 For besides the constant residents, such as Gerbet, 
 who afterwards became Bishop of Perpignan, Maurice 
 de Guerin and others, men of the calibre of the 
 Abbes Blanc and Eohrbacher, Cambalot, Monta- 
 lombert, Salinis, St. Beuve, and many others, drew 
 their inspiration from La Chenaie, and visited it 
 from time to time. 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 231 
 
 But it is to the younger element that this period 
 owes its chief fascination. Nothing could be more 
 beautiful in this respect than the inspired utter- 
 ances of poetic natures like Maurice de Gu^rin and 
 Francois Dubreil de Marzan. This last had set 
 before himself, as the object of his unceasing en- 
 deavour, the conversion of a young friend of his, 
 Hippolyte de la Morvonnais, and the letter in which 
 he described his success to M. Houet bears evident 
 traces of the tender feeling which had supported him 
 in the work. 
 
 After speaking of the solitary life he is leading, 
 he says : — 
 
 I must remind you that my hermitage is not far from 
 another, in which is living a friend who is very dear to me, 
 very dear, for my life is fused in his, for my soul est souvent 
 toute parfumie de la bonne odeur de la sienne. I spoke to 
 you of him last year. . . . 
 
 Now this friend who, even then, was very dear to me, 
 has now become even more so. . . . You know how he stood 
 at that time. Though filled with love, he had not that 
 faith which leads to action. . . . What drew him towards 
 Catholicism was the sight of faith and liberty going hand in 
 hand, the unity of the two forces in humanity which had 
 seemed the most opposed. But . . . when he saw the 
 leaders of the Church drawn up in line with the kings of 
 Europe, making common cause with them, and ever ready to 
 serve under them, he had great difficulty in getting over the 
 obstacle ; in a word, he believed absolutely in the Catholicism 
 of M. de Lamennais and not at all in that of the encyclical. 
 
 ... I had to explain to him the doctrine of the infal- 
 libility of the Church, which I myself had only just begun 
 to understand, and then I brought him twice to La Chenaie 
 during the pilgrimages which I made to that place this 
 
232 THE abbe de lamennais 
 
 winter. These pilgrimages were like those of Israel, going 
 to consult the Lord in Shilo. He came back . . . calm and 
 strong; his faith increased every day. This sympathetic 
 soul was in need of all the love which is to be found in the 
 Catholic communion. His happy admission into the great 
 Christian family was fixed for Holy "Week ; and, on Easter 
 morning, at La Chenaie, after our retreat, I trembled with 
 joy at seeing him seated beside me at the Holy Feast . . . 
 in that chapel which you know so well. 
 
 This it was which inspired Ste-Beuve with a 
 beautiful passage in his Notice sur Maurice de 
 Gitdrin, which, despite its historic inexactitude on 
 an important point, is none the less not without a 
 certain relative value : — 
 
 Let us imagine to ourselves [he says] La Chenaie, 
 still known as a holy place, on Easter Day 1833, a glorious 
 morning, and the touching scene which was being enacted 
 there. He who was still the Abbe de Lamennais was say- 
 ing in the chapel his pascal Mass, his last Mass (sic), and 
 was giving with his hand communion to his young disciples 
 who had remained faithful, and who believed that he also 
 was faithful ; there was Guerin, Elie de Kertanguy, Francois 
 Dubreil de Marzan, a fervent young poet happy in the 
 thought that he had brought to the Holy Table a new recruit, 
 a friend, older than himself by ten years — Hippolyte de la 
 Morvonnais, himself a poet. There were at that moment 
 at La Chenaie, or about to come there, men whose society 
 and conversation was fruitful in the purest joys : the Abbe 
 Gerbet, a gentle soul, tender in sympathy ; the Abbe Cazales, 
 affectionate, versed in the mysteries of the inner life. There 
 were other names which have since won for themselves a 
 place in the various paths of science — Eugene Bore, Fred- 
 erick de la Provostaye ; it was a pious and learned gathering. 
 "Who could have said then to those who grouped themselves 
 round the master, that he whose hand had just given them 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 233 
 
 communion would give it no more to anyone, would refuse 
 it for ever to himself — that the time was not far distant when 
 he would be able to describe himself as an oak broken by the 
 storm, with this proud motto : I break, but I do not bend ! 
 
 That this touching and beautiful description is 
 only partially true is evident from a letter of Maurice 
 de Guerin himself, written on May 16, 1833, to 
 M. de Bayne : — 
 
 It is generally thought [he says] that M. Feli is a proud 
 and irritable man. This opinion, which has prejudiced 
 many Catholics against him, is absolutely false. It would 
 be hard to find a man more steeped in humility and in self- 
 renunciation. If it were otherwise, he would not understand 
 Christianity, which is summed up" in humility ; and certainly 
 his realisation of it is beyond expression. His life is a con- 
 tinuous devotion and sacrifice to the mission he has received. 
 . . . This is the secret of all that he does. . . . What has 
 been taken for personal pride is only the intrepidity of the 
 apostle. In this sense the martyrs and the Fathers of the 
 Church were very proud. I say this with the greater assur- 
 ance, that I came here with some of that prejudice against 
 his character which is current in the world, and that I was 
 only undeceived when I had studied his life and seen into 
 the inmost recesses of his soul. The task he has undertaken 
 is so hard, and costs him so much, that it would be simple 
 madness to cling to it as he does if glory were his only 
 object ; for, in very truth, it is a bundle of thorns which he 
 presses against his breast. 
 
 His conversations are worth books, they are even better 
 than books. If you have not heard them, you cannot imagine 
 the charm of these chats, in which he gives full play' to his 
 imagination ; philosophy, politics, travels, anecdotes, epi- 
 grams, witticisms, gibes, all these are poured from his mouth 
 in forms at once original, lively, striking, and incisive, with 
 suggestions which are deep as well as new ; sometimes 
 
234 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 varied by similes admirable for sense and poetry, for he is 
 essentially a poet. From the age of seven he has been in 
 the habit of studying nature in its smallest details, and he 
 has laid up an immense store of observation, whence he 
 draws comparisons which give to his thoughts a great lucidity 
 and infinite charm. In the evening after supper we go into 
 the drawing-room. He throws himself on to a large sofa, 
 an old thing covered with worn-out red velvet, which stands 
 directly under the portrait of his grandmother, whose features 
 have a certain resemblance to those of her grandson, and 
 who seems to look down on him with pride. It is the hour 
 for conversation. Then, if you were to come into the draw- 
 ing-room, you would see over there, in a corner, a little head, 
 nothing but a head, the rest of the body being absorbed by 
 the sofa, with eyes shining like sapphires, pivoting about on 
 its neck ; you would hear a voice, sometimes grave, some- 
 times mocking, broken now and then by long bursts of harsh 
 laughter : c'est not re homme. Just beyond is a pale face 
 with broad forehead, black hair and fine eyes, bearing traces 
 of habitual sorrow and suffering, and speaking little : it is 
 M. Gerbet the saddest and most gentle of men. 
 
 Then follows a passage invaluable for its descrip- 
 tion of the work which was being done either at La 
 Chenaie or in connection with it : — 
 
 The editors of the Avenir, dispersed by the suppression 
 of the paper, are none the less continuing their Catholic 
 work. M. Feli is engaged on his great book, which, I am 
 sorry to say, will not be ready for two years. . . . M. Gerbet 
 is going on with his lectures on the introduction to the 
 philosophy of history, and M. de Coux with his on political 
 economy. Montalembert is writing articles for the Bevue 
 des Deux Mondes, and has just published a remarkable one 
 on Vandalism in France. M. Feli lately sent to the same 
 review a paper on Micali's history of Italy. M. Eohrbacher 
 is at Malestroit, in the Morbihan, where there is a house on 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 235 
 
 the model of this ; he is working on a history of the Church. 
 Bore is studying Oriental languages in Paris. M. Dault- 
 Dum6nil is writing a book on Calderon, the Catholic poet, 
 whom he intends to drag from his concealment in Spain 
 that he may reveal him to the age. M. Camhalot is giving 
 himself up to preaching, while M. Jean de Lamennais is 
 entirely occupied with the schools of his Brothers, which now 
 number about twenty thousand pupils. Of M. Daguerre's 
 doings I am ignorant ; and, if I may speak of myself in con- 
 nection with these great names, I am picking up the crumbs 
 which fall from the table round which these learned men 
 are sitting, for, if my mouth is small, my hunger is great, as 
 a little girl said when she asked for an alms. 
 
 But perhaps the greatest testimony to the tho- 
 roughness of the work done at La Chenaie is to be 
 found in the insidious reports which were circu- 
 lated by those who wished to drive the leader of the 
 movement to his ruin. Nothing, for instance, could 
 be more suggestive than an article quoted by 
 M. Koussel from the Ami de la Religion of Octo- 
 -Jaer_L5, 1833, which was originally borrowed from the 
 Invariable de Fribourg. We smile as we read the 
 description of the seminary of Saint Meen, where 
 the teachers 
 
 instil into their disciples the philosophic and religious 
 doctrines of the Avenir, and especially the political 
 principle of the sovereignty of the people. In literary 
 studies, as novels are the most ordinary vehicle of liberal 
 opinions, and contain the most pronounced expression of the 
 doctrine of progress, the professors not only allow their 
 pupils to read them, but take care to procure them for them, 
 that they may be able to keep pace with the movement of 
 the century. 
 
236 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 And continues the writer : — 
 
 It is no doubt with the same object that several hours 
 every day are devoted to the reading of the works of heretics 
 and of irreligious philosophers, as well as of revolutionary 
 papers. In the fine arts a similar liberty is allowed. In 
 music, for example, a student may hum what airs or sing 
 what songs he likes. In fine, except dancing and fencing, 
 for these have not yet been included in the list of necessary 
 accomplishments, nothing is wanting in these young Levites 
 of progress. 
 
 Then conies the terrible accusation that, ' besides 
 heretical and infidel works and impious newspapers, 
 they study there Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, Chinese, 
 Greek, Latin, and nearly all the living languages ' ; 
 and, to make matters worse, these things are spread 
 about the country by missionaries, ' who are as 
 anxious to gain proselytes to the party as they are 
 to win sinners to repentance,' though this does not 
 ' apply to schools of the Abbe Jean de Lamennais. 
 
 Separated as we are by a considerable period in 
 the evolution of history from the movement against 
 which these attacks were directed, and which thus 
 won from its opponents an involuntary homage, it is 
 possible for us to appreciate the full value of such 
 testimony to the thoroughness of the work produced 
 by the ardent apostles who followed the inspiration 
 of the master, whether at St. Meen, at Malestroit, or 
 at La Chenaie. But had we been living at the time 
 when those things happened, had our lot been cast 
 in one of those communities, and, more especially, 
 had we been living in daily intercourse with the 
 great genius who had founded them, we should have 
 
THE VOICE OP THE PEOPLE 237 
 
 formed a very different opinion of the attitude of the 
 politico-ecclesiastical world, and we should have 
 realised the importance of an attack which took 
 advantage of already existing suspicions, sprung 
 from the infinitesimal but potent germs of systematic 
 calumny. 
 
 It is impossible for us not to sympathise with 
 the boldness of the idea which Lamennais strove to 
 inspire in his disciples, or the steadfastness of pur- 
 pose manifested in the carrying out of the under- 
 taking. We cannot fail to recognise that, even after 
 the condemnation of the Avenlr, he still thought it 
 possible that the Church might take its place in that 
 renovated society which he saw to be inevitable, even 
 if it did not win for itself the position of leadership 
 in the actual transformation ; but the facts which 
 have come down to us compel us to admit that the 
 insidious machinations of a party slowly becoming 
 conscious of its own weakness were not altogether un- 
 successful, and that they gradually convinced him of 
 the utter ingratitude of the adherents of the Catholic 
 religion in France — of a religion, that is to say, which 
 owed to his own personal efforts the immense im- 
 provement which had taken place in its position, and 
 the fact that it had almost won for itself a title 
 to serious consideration in an age whose interests 
 seemed entirely alien to it. 
 
 This it is which accounts for those sudden out- 
 bursts of passion, those apparently unaccountable 
 fits of gloomy melancholy which often perplexed and 
 saddened his disciples. M. Roussel tells me that he 
 
238 
 
 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 heard from one who lived about this time at La 
 Chdnaie, that Lamennais was in the habit of 
 shutting himself into his room in the morning and 
 remaining for hours together alone with his work. 
 Sometimes, without the slightest warning, the door 
 would open, hurried, agitated footsteps were heard 
 in the passage leading into the garden, and, looking 
 out, his young friends saw him rushing aimlessly 
 towards the woods, pushing madly forward, evidently 
 intent on losing himself in those wandering natural 
 paths which wound their way into the tangled 
 darkness of the forest. On such occasions they 
 knew that interference was useless, and they waited 
 quietly till the crisis was over. Only one man 
 among the many who lived at La Chenaie, from 
 time to time, had any influence over, and dared to 
 approach, him — the Abbe" Gerbet. Sometimes, too, 
 he would frighten them by gloomy forebodings. On 
 March 24, 1833, Guerin wrote in his journal : — 
 
 E— — came up to me very much agitated and with tears 
 in his eyes. ' What is the matter ? ' I said to him. ' M. Feli 
 frightened me.' 'How?' ' He was sitting behind the chapel, 
 under the two Scotch firs ; he took his stick, drew a coffin 
 on the ground, and said to me : " I want to be buried there. 
 But there must be no monument, only a mound of sods. 
 Oh ! how happy I shall be ! " I thought that he was 
 feeling ill, and that he had a presentiment of the approach 
 of death.' 
 
 And on May 9 he interrupts himself in the middle 
 of a fascinating description of the sylvan beauties of 
 a summer at La Chenaie : — 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 239 
 
 But, my God, it cannot last ! Yesterday M. Feli pointed 
 out to me some leaves which were already pierced and 
 crumpled by insects. 
 
 It rained all last night, and there is an appearance of 
 freshness everywhere. At seven o'clock this morning I 
 took a stroll by the pond. The trees overhanging the 
 water were dripping into it, and each drop fell on the 
 smooth surface with a little splash which had something 
 plaintive about it. It was as if the trees had been weeping 
 all night, and their last tears were thus sadly dying away. 
 
 ' Do you know,' said M. Feli the other day, ' why man 
 is the most suffering of creatures ? It is because he stands 
 with one foot in the finite and the other in the infinite, 
 and is torn asunder, not by four horses . . . but by two 
 worlds.' 
 
 One day, too, on hearing the clock strike, he said to us : 
 ' If we' were to say to that clock that it would be broken at 
 a given moment, it would none the less strike its hour until 
 that moment was come. My children, be like that clock ; 
 whatever happens, always strike your hour.' 
 
 Thus, as we linger here, gazing on the ever- 
 varying scenes of this life of hope, of study, and of 
 peaceful wanderings over the mossy twig -strewn 
 carpeting of this woodland hermitage, we are pre- 
 vented from sinking into luxurious apathy by the 
 too violent contrast in the colouring of the picture 
 which fills our imagination. For as we look in 
 thought on this simple, touching scene, where the 
 master and his disciples, bound together by ties of 
 love and sympathy, prepare to set forth together to 
 the conquest of the world, we become painfully con- 
 scious that dark threatening clouds of calumny and 
 of hatred are gathering on the horizon, and massing 
 
240 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 themselves, preparatory to sweeping down and over- 
 shadowing the little community. 
 
 And yet it is to this period, when everything 
 seemed to combine to drive him to his destruction, 
 that we owe one of those inspired utterances which 
 often unexpectedly revealed to those who did not 
 know him the true nature of his genius. It was, 
 I think, towards the end of the spring of 1833, when 
 the underhand machinations of his enemies had suc- 
 ceeded in permeating public opinion with a vague 
 and undefined, yet fatal, prejudice against him, and 
 when they were about to culminate in open perse- 
 cution, that he gathered his young disciples around 
 him in the little chapel, the walls of which were 
 soon to hear his voice no more, and delivered to 
 them the first of a series of sixteen lectures on 
 humility, which has been preserved for us by a loving 
 hand : — 
 
 In bringing us [he said in his opening sentence], in 
 bringing us to this solitude God has led us far, yes, very 
 far, for the distance from the life of the world to the life of 
 a retreat is immense. And now that we have set aside our 
 occupations, that our thoughts are calm and our hearts less 
 agitated, we may turn to God, humbly and with confidence, 
 that He may guide us in the new way and make known to 
 us His designs over us. 
 
 And then he asked them to follow him as he ran 
 over the heads of his subject, striving to arouse in 
 them contempt of the world, and a gentle apprecia- 
 tion of the soft joys of the spiritual life. 
 
 Let us penetrate [he said in his second lecture] into 
 the mystery of our iniquities, and we shall understand what 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 241 
 
 is the nature of sin, which sacrifices outwardly our 
 neighbour and inwardly the gifts of grace to the egoism of 
 our personal law, violating order itself, the order of Creation, 
 in which everything aspires to God ; the order of redemption, 
 which is grounded on self-sacrifice, that universal self- 
 sacrifice which redeemed the world, and which should be 
 reproduced and perpetuated in Christian society, making 
 every Christian, according to the opportunities which have 
 been given him, the redeemer of his brothers. The wisdom 
 of the ancients gave to Satan the name of Ahriman, or 
 ruler of those who have no ruler. It says also : The man 
 who gives utterance to the word Mol is a devil. The 
 wisdom of God says; Vae soli (woe to the man who is 
 alone). This saying is pregnant with meaning, and contains 
 in itself the whole mystery of sin. 
 
 And in another place : — 
 
 Sin being a principle of egoism and of isolation, it 
 forces each to lose himself in his own individuality. The 
 insatiable moi breathes in all that lies around it ; it swells 
 itself, develops, grows steadily, and absorbs all that is 
 weaker than it , . . and it can be stopped in its progress 
 only by another tyrant equal to it or superior to it in 
 strength. There is a struggle, bloody, pitiless, and the 
 hideous society which is composed of these things is but 
 a seething mass of hungry combatants who come together 
 only to devour one another. What word can describe this 
 crowd of clashing individualities, this frightful confusion of 
 a selfish rabble : Hell ? 
 
 You are right. Hell is nothing else. Such is the con- 
 stitution of infernal society ; only the torment of fire is 
 wanting to it. This is the state of which sin has made us 
 citizens. Madmen that we are, we have forsaken the mild 
 freedom of the kingdom of God, that we might bow our- 
 selves under a yoke which is harder and more degrading. 
 In doing so, we have become slaves of the devil,. whose 
 nature is superior to ours . . . high and mighty lord, who 
 
 R 
 
242 THE ABBfi IDE LAMENNAIS 
 
 flatters our desire for independence while he loads us with 
 chains, and, whether they will or no, subdues to the disci- 
 pline of his army the deserters from God. 
 
 Then, after a terrible picture of the empire of 
 evil, after a scathing analysis of the so-called plea- 
 sures of the world, he points out to his disciples the 
 necessity of self-mortification, of denying themselves 
 many things innocent in themselves, that they may 
 prepare themselves to take their part in the great 
 struggle between the forces of God and Satan, that 
 they may contribute to the supreme triumph of 
 Ormuzd over Ahriman. 
 
 And finally, in the sixteenth lecture, he seems to 
 have been carried away by a vivid realisation of the 
 forces at work in contemporary society : — 
 
 We know very well that the world deceives us . . . if, 
 nevertheless, by a sort of fatal infatuation, we still hanker 
 after it ... it is, I think, a strong proof of our degrada- 
 tion. Thus, from the most insignificant village mayor to 
 Louis Philippe, from Nicolas to William of Holland, each 
 seeks to improve his own position, and, trampling on the 
 field or the kingdom of his neighbour, he often waters it 
 with blood. . . . Fools ! Are they the happier for it ? My 
 God ! Silvio Pellico, in the dungeons of Milan, of Venice, 
 of Spielberg, where he was a prey to frightful torments, 
 was a happier man than the pitiless Francis on his throne. 
 The man who is absorbed in the pursuit of the wealth or 
 greatness of the world is like a child running after a soap 
 bubble ; the bubble attracts him by its bright colours, but, 
 when he catches it, it bursts, and leaves in his hand only a 
 little water, dirty enough. 
 
 We can imagine the thrill of emotion with which 
 his disciples listened to the concluding paragraphs of 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 243 
 
 this lecture; the suppressed passion which had in- 
 spired the whole, which had given rise to this violent 
 contrast between the rampant egoism of the world 
 and the humility of the Christian, finally burst the 
 bonds he had imposed on it, fell upon them in all the 
 hideous reality of its practical application, and filled 
 them with a vague, indefinable dread of things to come. 
 
 Nor had they to wait long. 
 
 The Archbishop of Toulouse had written to Eome 
 with the object of provoking a personal condemnation 
 of Lamennais. In May, the answer of his Holiness 
 was published, and it constituted the first of a series 
 of blows which were now to be aimed at the devoted 
 head of one of the greatest of the defenders whom the 
 evolution of the world has given to Catholicism. 
 
 It would not be consistent with the artistic pur- 
 pose of this work to quote at length from documents 
 pregnant with all the disadvantages of ecclesiastical 
 Latin, disadvantages which are rather increased than 
 otherwise by translation. I shall content myself, 
 therefore, in referring to those which are now about 
 to be forced upon us, with stating that they are all 
 published in the Affaires de Borne, only translating 
 such passages as are absolutely necessary to the 
 subject. 
 
 In the letter to the Archbishop of Toulouse, dated 
 May 8, 1833, the Pope, after alluding to the en- 
 cyclical Mirari vos, in which the Avenir was con- 
 demned, continues : — 
 
 The Father of light, in whom we had placed all our 
 hopes, gave strength and power ,to our voice ; our encyclical 
 
244 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 was received everywhere with joy, and with an .eagerness 
 which bore witness to religious feeling, and this has been 
 thankfully conveyed to us by the bishops, and by the most 
 respectable persons in every order of society. More than 
 this: the very authors and the abettors of the projects 
 which formed the special objects of our solicitude, and to 
 whom we took care to forward the encyclical, publicly de- 
 clared that they would at once desist from their enterprises 
 in order that they might not oppose themselves to our 
 will. This declaration at first inspired us with the opinion 
 that they had sincerely accepted our judgment . . . and 
 that they would shortly give more convincing proof of 
 this. . . . This sweet hope had revived our soul, alarmed at 
 the difficulty of the times. . . . But tve have been once more 
 grieved by things which are being circulated in the general 
 public. We therefore raise our eyes and our hands to Jesus 
 Christ, in humble supplication, &c. 
 
 When this letter was made public, Lamennais' 
 soul was once more filled with bitterness ; the corre- 
 spondence bears witness to it, and yet, after some 
 delay, he wrote to the Holy Father, August 4, recalling 
 the fact of his absolute submission to the encyclical, 
 and he added : — 
 
 Nevertheless, I see, Holy Father, with profound grief, 
 by a letter addressed by your Holiness to the Archbishop of 
 Toulouse, and which has been published in the newspapers, 
 that some one has succeeded in inspiring your Holiness with 
 suspicions of which I am the object. How this has come 
 about ... I do not know. "What are the things which- 
 are being circulated in the general public, and which have 
 once more grieved you ? The more I question myself, the 
 further I am from thinking of anything with which I can 
 reproach myself. What I do know, and the fact is public 
 property, is that the Avenir was withdrawn, and the Agence 
 Catholique dissolved. . . . That since the day when that 
 
THE VOICE OP THE PEOPLE 245 
 
 was done, none of us have so much as thought of under- 
 taKiriglaiything similar, and that thus we have proved our 
 obedience to your Holiness, not only by words, but by acts 
 _as_universally visible as the sun. 
 
 But, since fresh explanations have become necessary, I 
 now declare : — 
 
 First. — That for many reasons, but more especially 
 because it belongs to the Head of the Church to judge of 
 what is good and useful to it, I am resolved for the future, 
 in my acts and my writings, entirely to avoid those matters 
 which relate to it. 
 
 Second ly.—Th at no one, thank God, could be more 
 ready to submit than I am to all decisions emanating . . . 
 from the Holy Apostolic See in matters of faith and morals, 
 and to such disciplinary laws as it shall promulgate under 
 the sanction of its sovereign authority. 
 
 And he concludes by asking that if this declaration 
 be not sufficient, ' the Holy Father may deign to let 
 me know what terms I should make use of, that I 
 may give him full satisfaction.' 
 
 Unfortunately, the matter did not end here. The 
 Bishop of Eennes seems suddenly to have become 
 aware that Lamennais was Superior-General of a 
 large and powerful order, and he called on him to 
 resign his position as head of the society of St. Peter. 
 This was fatal to the community on the borders of 
 the forest of Coetquen. Maurice de Gu6rin described 
 the situation in a letter to M. de la Morvonnais : — 
 
 I have lost all hope of being able to stay on at La 
 Chenaie. M. Feli says that the impending persecutions 
 compel him to separate himself from all association, and 
 consequently that we must leave. The very idea is frightful, 
 but what can we do ? I must prepare to quit La Chenaie 
 ■ with resignation, as I entered it with joy, and to double my 
 
24G THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 sacrifice ; for, after having renounced the world, I now have 
 to renounce a solitude which has become dearer to me than 
 the world. Such is life. It seems that we are to leave this 
 at the beginning of next week for St. Meen, where we are to 
 make a retreat, after which we are to shut ourselves up at 
 Ploermel. 
 
 This means that the position of Superior had been 
 transferred from M. F61i to Jean de Lamennais, and 
 we are not surprised to find that the change was not 
 appreciated by those whose choice of a leader was 
 thus rudely set aside : — 
 
 We were told [he wrote, on October 2, to Dubreil de 
 Marzan] in the retreat at St. Meen that our vows implied 
 complete and passive obedience ; it seems to me, on the 
 other hand, that here especially they might apply that 
 admirable principle of order and liberty, of variety in unity, 
 which, while binding us together by a common rule, leaves 
 to each the possibility of individual development. For my 
 part I would infinitely prefer the chances of a life of adven- 
 ture to allowing myself to be thus garotted by a system. 
 It is true that M. Jean is, like his brother, a friend of liberty, 
 but his position forces him to be careful in his expressions. 
 It is not from him that slavery will come, but from higher 
 up ; they are forcing him to restrain us, and you will under- 
 stand that if the congregation in its infancy does not suck 
 the milk of liberty, it would have been well had it never been 
 born. 
 
 And on November 7 he wrote to Morvonnais : — 
 
 The outcry which has been raging for some time against 
 M. Feb necessitated our departure from La Chenaie. But 
 a harder trial awaited me. The congregation has been 
 placed in so critical a position, the object of so much irrita- 
 bility and suspicion, that it has been judged prudent to refuse 
 admittance to any more laymen, and to send away those who 
 
TIUL VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 247 
 
 already belong to it. So I am thrown once more upon the 
 world, and compelled again to undertake the difficult task of 
 mapping out my future. All this has happened so suddenly 
 that I have hardly had time to think, or even to find a roof 
 to shelter me. 
 
 "While the members of the community, who had 
 hoped to make their home at La Ch6naie, were being 
 thus cruelly undeceived, Lamennais himself was being 
 hurried step by step to the fatal issue of the struggle 
 in which he was engaged. On August 4, as we have 
 seen, he had written to the Pope, and about two 
 months later an answer was published under the form 
 of a letter to the Bishop of Kennes, dated October 5. 
 Alluding to the passage in which Lamennais had 
 asked, ' What are the tilings ivhich are being circu- 
 lated in the general public ? ' &c, he says : — 
 
 Finding ourselves deceived in the hopes inspired in us 
 by this first act (of submission), which we had considered 
 the forerunner of declarations which would show to the 
 Catholic world that he holds steadfastly and firmly to that 
 sound doctrine set forth in our letter to the bishops of the 
 Church, we had just reason to be afflicted. For while we 
 were invoking this result in our daily supplications, a letter 
 by the same de Lamennais was brought to our notice, pub- 
 lished in the newspapers [Journal de la Haye, February 22, 
 1833], which ' shows clearly that he is still imbued with 
 those principles which he formerly professed, and which we 
 had hoped he would himself condemn.' 
 
 He also alludes to a work by Lamennais on 
 Poland, ' a writing full of temerity and malice,' and 
 to ' other things of the same kind which are being 
 circulated, which point to a systematic attempt to 
 establish what had previously been thought of. All 
 
.248 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 this, without a word of protest from Lamennais, cal- 
 culated to convince us that these things have been 
 falsely and calumniously attributed to him. 
 
 But the matter which had produced the greatest 
 displeasure in the Pope was the clause, in the last 
 letter to Kome, in which Lamennais had stated his 
 intention of carefully avoiding all questions hearing 
 on the Church and the cause of religion, a resolution 
 which seemed to him to point to a difference of 
 opinion on a doctrinal decision. 
 
 After this he recalls the request contained in the 
 letter to which this was an answer, and adds : Let 
 him undertake to profess, undeviatingly and abso- 
 lutely, the doctrine set forth in our encyclical. 
 
 Needless to say the letter of Gregory XVI. to the 
 Bishop of Eennes was received with universal accla- 
 mations by the numerous enemies of the Mennaisian 
 School, and this tended seriously to complicate the 
 situation. Meditating on the course he ought to 
 pursue, Lamennais foresaw that an unconditional 
 declaration on his part would be misunderstood, and 
 would lead to conclusions destructive of Catholicism 
 itself. He resolved, therefore, in drawing up his 
 answer, to maintain the distinction between his duties 
 as a citizen and as a Catholic. Following up this 
 idea, on November 5 he wrote once more to the Holy 
 Father. He now declared : — 
 
 (1) That in so far as it [the encyclical] proclaims ... the 
 apostolic tradition ... I adhere to it, undeviatingly and 
 absolutely, and I acknowledge that I am bound as a Catholic 
 to 'write or approve nothing which is contrary to it. 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 249 
 
 (2) That in so far as it decides and regulates points of 
 . . . ecclesiastical discipline, I must submit to it without 
 reserve. 
 
 But in the actual state of public opinion, especially in 
 France . . . my conscience compels me to declare that if in 
 the religious order the Christian has only to submit and to 
 obey, he remains, so far as the spiritual power is concerned, 
 entirely free in his opinions, his words, his acts, in that order 
 which is purely temporal. 
 
 He had now resolved the question to a very 
 simple issue, and it was natural that his opponents 
 should concentrate on this, for they saw that they 
 had driven him to his last refuge, and that he must 
 soon decide between the renunciation of Catholicism 
 or of the principles which had made the acceptance 
 of it possible to him. 
 
 Meanwhile he had moved to Paris, where his 
 presence was necessitated by his difficulties with 
 his publishers. While there, he went to consult 
 the archbishop, Mgr. Quelen, who advised him to 
 write a memoir to the Pope. He did so, but before 
 it had reached its destination the long dreaded blow 
 had fallen. It came in the form of an answer to his 
 letter of November 5, written this time not by the 
 Pope but by Cardinal Pacca. Eeminding Lamennais 
 of the fact that he had asked for a hint as to the 
 terms in which his submission should be drawn up, 
 he informed him that his recent letter had been 
 utterly inadequate, and had been the cause of con- 
 siderable uneasiness to his Holiness. 'I say nothing,' 
 he says, ' of certain expressions in your last letter to 
 the Holy Father, to which I am sure you did not 
 
25° THE ABBE I)E LAMENNAIS 
 
 intend to give the meaning which they seem to in- 
 dicate ; but I am bound to tell you that the explana- 
 tions contained in that letter have deeply wounded 
 the mild and tender heart of the Sovereign Pontiff, 
 who, though moved by great love for you, cannot 
 pass over your last declaration, and is even compelled 
 formally to disapprove of it.' And he recommends 
 him to send to ' our very Holy Father a declaration 
 which is worthy of you, that is to say, so simple, 
 absolute, and unconditional as to be thoroughly in 
 accordance with the promise you made to him.' 
 
 Lamennais was quite aware of the fact that the 
 Gallican party, which it had been the object of his 
 life to destroy, desired nothing more than to see him 
 driven to some act of open rebellion, which, by plac- 
 ing him in an impossible position, would demonstrate 
 the absurdity of that Ultramontanism for the grow- 
 ing influence of which he was mainly responsible. 
 He could have defeated them at once by an absolute 
 submission, but the complicated network of circum- 
 stances which now surrounded the question made it 
 difficult for him to do this. Lacordaire had comforted 
 himself by the reflection that, since the opinions 
 condemned in the encyclical were mainly concerned 
 with matters which drew their interest from the 
 varying circumstances of place and time, the value 
 of the Papal decisions would be determined by the 
 natural progress of events. But now all this was 
 changed, at least so it appeared to Lamennais. 
 Kome had claimed that its decisions were to be 
 accepted as part of the Apostolic tradition, even in 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 251 
 
 matters which he had hitherto considered as essen- 
 tially different from them in their nature. And these 
 decisions, in the language of the time, constituted 
 so many infallible decrees ; for the Vatican Council 
 had not yet been held, and the Catholic world was 
 still wavering between two theories, infinitely less 
 liberal than that which has since been authoritatively 
 proclaimed. It would be impossible to imagine a 
 more striking illustration of the truth that definition 
 narrows the scope of a principle, than may be seen 
 in the contrast between the Gallicans and Ultra- 
 montanes on the one hand, and the Orthodox 
 Catholics of to-day on the other. 
 
 Nowadays the powers of the i J ope are strictly 
 defined, and infallibility has come to. mean simply 
 protection from positive error in matters of faith and 
 morals, under circumstances of solemnity which very 
 rarely occur, and this protection in no way precludes 
 the necessity of taking all possible human precautions, 
 nor the making use of all ordinary means for arriving 
 at truth. The old Ultramontanes, on the other hand, 
 believed in a vague, undefined, and therefore prac- 
 tically unlimited, infallibility — a kind of personal 
 inspiration constantly residing in the Pope, guiding 
 him in every act of his pontificate, and Lamennais 
 himself in his earlier writings had committed himself 
 to this theory in its crudest form. Compared with 
 this, the Gallican theory seemed to lend itself to a 
 more liberal interpretation of theology, and certainly, 
 if the nation and not the individual be considered as 
 the unit of religious society, this idea is not without 
 
2 ^ 2 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 a certain foundation in fact. But the supporters of 
 the Gallican hypothesis had forgotten, perhaps closed 
 their eyes to the fact, that a bishop may be, nay, is 
 likely, when supported by an unlimited jurisdiction, 
 to be the greatest tyrant in the world, and his 
 tyranny will be the more unbearable that it is above 
 criticism and that it admits of no appeal. This 
 remark applies with equal force to a national episco- 
 pate, which is always liable in the majority of its 
 members to fall under the influence of a dominant 
 idea, whether this last find expression for itself in 
 a tsar, a king, a committee of public safety, or a 
 national assembly. 
 
 The case before us is a striking instance of this. 
 According to the Gallican theory, a decision of the 
 Pope could be referred to a general council by the 
 assembled rulers of a national church, but if no 
 protest was raised, it took its place among the 
 authoritative decrees officially promulgated for the 
 acceptance of the faithful, and became an essential 
 part of the Catholic teaching — in other words, it 
 acquired the character of infallibility. Lamennais, 
 as we have seen, had placed himself in opposition to 
 the royalistico-Gallican party, and consequently to 
 the majority of the French episcopate. On appeal 
 to Rome he had been condemned, and the bishops 
 had not protested. As a result, the decree was 
 irrevocable not only on Ultramontane but on Galli- 
 can principles, and the Church seemed eternally 
 bound to the political and social doctrines of the 
 past. 
 
THE VOICE OP THE PEOPLE 253 
 
 It was obvious that if this was the true statement 
 of the case the distinction made by Lacordaire was 
 worthless. Lamennais saw the matter in this light, 
 and I think that it is here that we must place the 
 date of the final and crushing blow delivered to his 
 faith by the cruel and ruthless campaign carried on 
 against him by his narrow, and therefore unscrupu- 
 lous, co-religionists in France. He still wavered, it is 
 true, but his letters and writings from this period 
 bear traces of the most frightful confusion ; it is a 
 terrible medley of violent starts in a forward direction 
 and no less violent reactions impossible to unravel ; 
 and in the heart-rending struggle which marks the 
 course of the next few months there is nothing to 
 relieve the painful monotony of the approaching 
 downfall. 
 
 It was in no very hopeful mood then that he went 
 once more to consult the archbishop. He has de- 
 scribed the circumstance in the Affaires tie Rome : — 
 
 Thinking over the words of the encyclical, I could not 
 escape from the conviction that it contained things in their 
 nature foreign to revelation, and which could not claim the 
 interior, exclusive, absolute, unlimited belief of Catholics 
 unless there were granted to the exactor of such belief an 
 infallibility at once absolute and unlimited, in a word, as it j 
 exists in God Himself. I merely state the reflections whichJ 
 occurred to my mind ; I do not attempt to justify them. . . . 
 
 After having weighed ' the matter over in the presence of 
 God, I went to see Mgr. the Archbishop of Paris, and I told 
 him that, no longer understanding anything of the principles ' 
 which I had hitherto understood as forming the basis of; 
 Catholic authority, only one thing seemed to me worth! 
 striving for — peace ; that consequently I had decided to sign! 
 
25i THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 the declaration which was demanded of me, but that this in 
 no way applied to my duties towards my country and 
 humanity, the sacrifice of which no authority in the world 
 1 could wring from me. 
 
 The declaration, which was drawn up in Latin, 
 ran as follows: — 
 
 I, the undersigned, in the very form of words contained 
 in the letter of the Sovereign Pontiff Gregory XVI. of 
 October 5, 1833, declare that I will exclusively and abso- 
 lutely profess the doctrine set forth in the encyclical letter 
 of the same pontiff, and that I will neither write nor approve 
 of anything contrary to it. 
 
 Paris : December 11, 1833. 
 
 Thus he had finally silenced his enemies, but in 
 doing so. he had dealt himself a blow from which he 
 never recovered. On January 1, 1834, he wrote to 
 Montalembert : — 
 
 f I came to see in this sad business only a question of 
 (peace at any price, and I resolved to sign, not only what 
 they demanded of me, but also anything without exception 
 that they might suggest, even were it a declaration that the 
 Pope is God, the great God of heaven and earth, and that he 
 alone should be adored. 
 
 And on the 10th of the same month Guerin 
 wrote to his sister Eugenie : — 
 
 The news which I have received from Paris tells me sad 
 things about the state of M. Feli. To anyone who knows 
 the extent of suffering of which a soul like his is capable, 
 or who realises the amount of pain which has been caused 
 him, it is astonishing that he lives, and it is no uncommon 
 thing to hear from the mouth of his friends, and those who 
 know him well, these mournful words : He will not survive 
 it for two years; tlieij have killed him. Yes, they have 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 255 
 
 killed him. Do you realise what a terrible thing is the 
 murder of genius, of a Catholic genius armed for the 
 faith ? Perhaps the body too will die ; for often the steel 
 which pierces the soul cuts through the mortal life, and, 
 if this happens, two murders will weigh on certain 
 consciences. 
 
 If he recovers he will doubtless go to America. 
 
 To go to die in America, where he will find nothing to 
 remind him of his La Chenaie ! For the great lakes will 
 not replace the pond, nor the vast forests the plantation of 
 beeches, nor any walk the path which we made for him by 
 the side of the water, nor any spot, that which he had 
 chosen for his tomb behind the little chapel. My God ! 
 My God ! that he should go to America to die ! And what 
 will become of us without.him? -Young men whom he led 
 througb the paths of science and of art, whom he nourished 
 with his milk, whom he warmed against his breast ! My 
 dear friend, I can but allow the tears to flow and abandon 
 myself to grief as an orphan. 
 
 Under these circumstances it must have seemed 
 a bitter mockery when he received a letter of con- 
 gratulation from the Holy Father, and we are not x 
 surprised to find him writing in the Affaires <le Rome : I 
 ' The archbishop pressed me to write to the Pope, 
 thanking him for his letter to me, and I answered 
 that silence seemed to me the more respectful course.' 
 Shortly after this the venerable prelate once more 
 wrote to him, to try and persuade him to alter his 
 resolution. Lamennais answered him in a letter in 
 which occurs a passage of surpassing interest. 
 
 After maintaining that a written communication 
 was bound to commit him, on one side or the other, 
 beyond his intention, he continued : — . 
 
256 
 
 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 I have already declared that henceforward I would 
 
 occupy myself in no way with anything relating to the 
 
 Catholic religion or the Church. What more can they ask 
 
 ! of me ? Do they wish that, cutting myself off from my 
 
 j country and humanity, I should remain neutral in things 
 
 i which interest them? But what power can dispense me 
 
 ; from my duties to them ? Whatever happens, I shall fulfil 
 
 them in my own small way ; and if fresh persecutions are 
 
 to be the reward of my fidelity . . . God, I am sure, will 
 
 give me strength to withstand them, with the constancy 
 
 befitting a man full of faith in eternal justice, and little 
 
 thoughtful of things which are only in time. 
 
 It was probably about this time that Frederick 
 Ozanam and his young Catholic friends called on the 
 archbishop, with the object of persuading him to 
 appoint Lacordaire to preach a course of sermons to 
 the student youth of Paris. When they came into 
 his room they were surprised to find him alone with 
 Lamennais. As soon as they had stated the purpose 
 of their visit, Mgr. Quelin, looking kindly at the 
 great writer, deplored the fact that the gift of oratory 
 had not been vouchsafed to him, as the people would 
 have crowded to him. To which came the sad reply : 
 ' Pour viol, monseignenr, via carricre est finie. 1 
 
 But the archbishop was determined to do his 
 utmost to stave off the approaching catastrophe, and 
 shortly afterwards he paid a personal visit to Lamen- 
 nais. Unfortunately there is no certain record of the 
 details of the interview, but the fact has come down to 
 us that while it was in progress Ste-Beuve was on his 
 way to pay his respects, and to offer what comfort he 
 could to the fallen leader. Arriving at the house, he 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 257 
 
 met the venerable prelate at the door, looking very 
 much agitated. Going in, he found Lamennais in 
 one of his terrible moods, restless and irritable, and 
 the latter, greeting him with the words ' It is time to 
 2nd an end to this,' opened a drawer and took from it 
 a bundle of papers, which he presented to the critic, 
 asking him to get them published for him, and he 
 expressed a wish that the work should be anonymous. 
 The bundlo of papers was the manuscript of the 
 Paroles d'lin Oroya nt. 
 
 Ste-Beuve undertook the business, though not 
 without some misgivings, and it is said that a few 
 days afterwards, on calling at the publisher's to see 
 how the work was getting on, he was astonished to 
 find him in a state of considerable agitation and per- 
 plexity, and the good man told him that he had just 
 been to the workshop to see how the men were 
 getting on, and had found the whole place in an 
 uproar at the fragments they had read in the course 
 of their work. He maintained that he could not 
 possibly take the responsibility of the publication, 
 and was with difficulty persuaded to go on with it, on 
 condition that his own name did not appear. 
 
 Meanwhile the report had gone round that some- 
 thing extraordinary from the pen of Lamennais was 
 in preparation, and the archbishop wrote to him, 
 exhorting him to reliect before taking a step which 
 would be irrevocable. He answered on April 29 from 
 La Chenaie, to which he had now returned, explain- 
 ing the scope of the book, and denying that it in any 
 way infringed on his resolution to write no more on 
 
 s 
 
258 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 matters relating to religion, maintaining, however, 
 | that he had been forced to publish it by 'the 
 j frightful state in which I see France on the one hand 
 
 \ and Europe on the other.' But it is not the result of 
 
 ^a sudden fit of passsion, for ' it is a year since it was 
 
 finished.' There are certain passages which might 
 
 seem to trespass on the domain of theology, but, ' in 
 
 speaking of Jesus Christ, I have carefully abstained 
 
 from uttering a word capable of being applied to 
 
 ) Christianity, as determined by dogmatic or positive 
 
 ! teaching.' There are, however, in it two things 
 
 which will shock many of his readers : (1) ' The 
 
 - indignation with which I speak of kings and their 
 system.' (2) ' The intention which I attribute to 
 
 -sovereigns, while laughing at Christianity, to make 
 use of its ministers in pursuance of their personal 
 ends.' 
 
 Then the book appeared, and society reeled as it 
 awoke to the fact that a terrible and unexpected blow 
 had been dealt to it, that the first note of the approach- 
 ing revolution had been sounded. 
 
 To describe such a work would be difficult, to 
 criticise it by comparison with the ordinary standards 
 impossible. The author begins by an invocation of 
 the Trinity, which, in a measure, prepares us for the 
 awful grandeur of the poem which is about to be 
 unrolled before our eyes : — 
 
 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
 Holy Ghost. Amen. 
 
 Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to men 
 of goodwill. 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 259 
 
 He that hath ears to hear let him hear ; he that hath 
 eyes let him open them and look, for the time is near. 
 
 The Father brought forth His Son . . . His Word, and 
 the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us ; He came 
 into the world, and the world did not know Him. 
 
 The Son promised to send the Spirit, the Comforter, 
 the Spirit who proceeds from the Father and from Him, 
 itheir mutual love : He will come, and will renew the face of 
 the earth, and it will be as a second creation. 
 
 Eighteen centuries ago the Word sowed the divine seed, 
 i and the Spirit caused it to germinate. Men have seen it 
 ; flourish and have tasted of its fruit, the fruit of the Tree of 
 Life, planted in their poor abode. 
 
 Verily I say unto you, they were filled with a great joy 
 when they saw the light, and felt themselves penetrated 
 with the fire of heaven. 
 
 Now the earth is dark and cold. 
 
 Our fathers saw the sun go down. When it sank below 
 
 the horizon the human race was seized with trembling. 
 
 Then there was in that night a something which has no 
 
 j name. Children of the night, the West is black, but the East 
 
 i is beginning to grow pale. 
 
 Listen, and tell me whence comes this rumour, confused, 
 vague, strange, which is heard on every side. 
 
 Lay your hand upon the earth and tell me why it has 
 trembled. 
 
 ' Something which we do not understand is moving in 
 fthe world : it is the work of God. 
 
 Is there a man who is not waiting ? Is there a heart 
 which does not beat ? 
 
 Son of man, go up to the heights, and tell me what 
 thou seest. 
 
 I see on the horizon a livid cloud, and around it a red 
 light as the reflection of a fire. 
 
 Son of man, again what dost thou see ? 
 j I see clouds of dust far off, moving on every side, clash- 
 
260 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 I ing, mingling, confused. They pass over States, and when 
 1 they are gone I see only the plain. 
 
 I see people rising in tumult, and kings grow pale under 
 ! their crown. There is war between them, war unto death. 
 
 I see one throne, two thrones broken, and the people 
 , are scattering the debris over the earth. 
 
 I see a people fighting as the Archangel Michael against 
 i Satan. Its blows are terrible, but it is naked, and its enemy 
 is covered with strong armour. 
 
 My God ! it falls ; it is dead ! No, it is only wounded ; 
 ,. Mary, the Virgin Mother, covers it with her mantle, smiles 
 on it, and withdraws it for a little time from the fight. 
 
 And so the inspired author, maddened by an over- 
 powering sense of injustice, moved to the inmost 
 depths of his wounded soul, seizes his reader and 
 drags him with him, compelling him to witness the 
 
 \ successive scenes of this dream of blood, of tyranny, 
 and of revolution, in which there is no figure and no 
 circumstance which has not its counterpart in reality, 
 till at last, when both are tired, there is a pause, and 
 the dream gives place to the soft, sad accents of a 
 
 '• plaintive song. 
 
 When you see a man dragged to prison or to death, do 
 ,,> not hasten to say he is a bad man, who has committed a 
 crime against his brother. 
 
 For perhaps he is a good man who has tried to serve 
 \ his brothers, and who is punished by their oppressors. 
 
 When you see a people loaded with irons and given 
 over to the executioner, do not hasten to say that is a 
 turbulent people seeking to trouble the peace of the earth. 
 
 For perchance it is a martyr people dying for the human 
 race. 
 
 Eighteen centuries ago, in an eastern town, the pontiffs 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 261 
 
 and the kings of that day nailed upon a cross, after having 
 beaten Him, a rebel, a blasphemer, as they called Him. 
 
 On the day of His death hell trembled, but there was joy 
 in heaven. 
 
 For the blood of the just had redeemed the world. 
 
 Thus, as vision follows vision, we are, as it were, 
 torn asunder by the violent contrasts which force 
 themselves upon us. Sometimes we vainly struggle 
 in the grasp of a powerful hand, as, in spite of our- 
 selves, we are plunged into the depths of hell. 
 
 The night was dark ; the starless sky weighed over the 
 earth as a slab of black marble on a tomb. 
 
 And nothing broke the silence of that night but a 
 strange noise, as a gentle flapping' of wings, which was heard 
 from time to time over the fields and the towns. 
 
 Then the darkness grew deeper, and there was no man 
 who did not feel his soul shrink, as a shudder ran through 
 him. 
 
 And in a room draped in black and lit by a red lamp, 
 seven men clothed in purple, and with crowns on their heads, 
 were sitting on seven seats of iron. 
 
 And in the middle of the room was a throne built of 
 bones, and at the foot of the throne, as a stool, was an over- 
 turned crucifix, and before the throne a table of ebony, and 
 on the table a vase full of red, foaming blood, and a human 
 skull. 
 
 And the seven crowned men seemed thoughtful and 
 sad. . . . 
 
 And one of them got up, staggered towards the throne, 
 and put his feet upon the crucifix. 
 
 As he did so, his limbs trembled, and he seemed about 
 to faint. The others looked on in silence ; nor did they 
 move, but something, I know not what, passed over their 
 faces, a smile which is not of man. . . . 
 
 And he who seemed about to faint stretched forth his 
 
262 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 hand, seized the vase of blood, poured some of it into the 
 skull, and drank. 
 
 And the drink seemed to strengthen him. 
 
 And, raising his head, this cry was heard as a low rat- 
 tling in his throat : — 
 
 'Cursed be Christ, who has brought liberty into the 
 world ! ' 
 
 And the six other crowned men rose up all together, 
 and all gave utterance to the same cry : — 
 
 ' Cursed be Christ, who has brought liberty into the 
 world ! ' 
 
 After which, when they had returned to their iron seats, 
 the first said : — 
 
 ' My brothers, what shall we do that we may destroy 
 liberty ? For where its reign begins ours ends. The cause 
 is common to all of us : let each one propose what seems 
 good to him. 
 
 ' This is my advice. Before Christ came, who dared to 
 oppose us ? It is His religion which has destroyed us ; let us 
 abolish the religion of Christ.' 
 
 And ail answered : ' That is true. Let us abolish the 
 religion of Christ.' 
 
 Then each in turn arose and gave his opinion. 
 One, that science and thought should be crushed out ; 
 another, that communication with foreign nations 
 should be forbidden; another, that division and hatred 
 should be sown among the people to prevent their 
 uniting against the sovereign ; another, that they 
 should act on the principle that ' the executioner is 
 the chief minister of a good prince ' ; another, that 
 they should destroy the energy of their subjects by 
 corruption, to which last all answered : — 
 
 ' That is true, we must sap their energy, their strength, 
 their courage by corruption.' 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 263 
 
 Then the seventh, after drinking, like the others, from 
 the human skull, spoke thus, with his foot upon the cruci- 
 fix:— 
 
 ' Away with Christ ! there must be war to the death, 
 eternal war between Him and us. 
 
 ' But how can we draw the people away from Him ? To 
 attempt it would be useless. What shall we do then? 
 Listen ! We must gain over the priests of Christ with pro- 
 perty, honours, and power. 
 
 ' And they will command the people, in Christ's name, to 
 submit to us in everything. . . . 
 
 ' And the people will believe them, and will obey for 
 conscience sake, and our power will be greater than before.' 
 
 And all answered : ' That is true. We must win over the 
 priests of Christ.' 
 
 Suddenly the lamp which lit" the room went out, and 
 the seven men took leave of one another in the dark. 
 
 And this saying came to a just man who, at that mo- 
 ment, was watching and praying before a cross : ' My day is 
 at hand. Adore and fear nothing.' 
 
 Through a mist, grey and heavy, I perceived, as often 
 happens at the hour of twilight, a plain, bare, empty, 
 cold. 
 
 From the middle of it rose a rock, from which fell, drop 
 
 by drop, a brackish water, and I heard the soft, dull dripping 
 of the falling drops, and there was no other sound. 
 
 And seven paths, after winding through the plain, came 
 up to the rock, and near that rock, at the entrance to each, 
 was a stone smeared over with an indescribable something, 
 damp and green, like the slime of a reptile. 
 
 Suddenly, on one of the paths I saw a shadow moving 
 slowly along, and when it came nearer, I realised that it was 
 not a man, but the resemblance of a man. 
 
 And in the place where the heart should have been was 
 a clot of blood. 
 
 And it sat down upon the stone, which was damp and 
 
264 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 green, and its limbs trembled, and, bowing its head, it hugged 
 itself with its arms as if to retain a remainder of warmth. 
 
 And by the six other paths, six other shades made their 
 way to the damp green stone. 
 
 And they sat there, silent and bent, under the weight of 
 an incomprehensible agony. 
 
 And their silence dragged on, I know not how long, for 
 the sun never rises over that plain, and they know there 
 neither morning nor evening; but the drops of water, in 
 their falling, measure a time, monotonous, unbroken, dreary, 
 eternal. 
 
 And the thing was so horrible to see, that if God had 
 not given me strength I should not have been able to 
 bear it. 
 
 Then one of the shades, with a convulsive shudder, 
 raised his head, and sent forth a sound like the harsh, dry 
 sighing of the wind as it blows through a skeleton. 
 
 And the rock sent back these words to my ear : — 
 
 ' Christ has conquered, be He cursed ! ' 
 
 And a shiver ran through the six other shades, and, 
 raising their heads together, they gave utterance to the 
 6ame blasphemy : ' Christ has conquered, be He cursed ! ' 
 
 And immediately they were seized with a greater trem- 
 bling, the fog grew thicker, and for a moment the water 
 ceased to drip. 
 
 And the seven shades were bent once more under the 
 weight of their secret agony, and there was a second silence 
 longer than the first. 
 
 Then one of them, without rising from his stone, 
 motionless, and leaning forward, said to the others : — • 
 
 ' So it has happened to you as it has to me. Have all 
 our plans been brought to naught ? ' 
 
 And each in turn related how his attempt had 
 
 failed. 
 
 Then the seventh shade : — 
 
 ' Christ has conquered, curse Him ! ' 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 265 
 
 And all together made answer : — 
 
 ' Christ has conquered, curse Him ! ' 
 
 And I saw a hand advancing ; it dipped its finger into 
 the dark water, whose drops measured, in falling, eternal 
 time, and it marked the foreheads of the seven shades, and 
 it was for ever. 
 
 Yet hardly have we realised the full meaning of 
 these terrible pictures, when the scene once more 
 changes, and we seem to be listening to a far off echo 
 from the Sermon on the Mount : — 
 
 When a tree stands alone, it is shaken by the winds and 
 stripped of its leaves ; and its branches, instead of standing 
 out, are lowered as if seeking the earth. 
 
 When a plant is alone, finding no shelter from the rays 
 of the sun, it languishes, droops, and dies. 
 
 When man is alone, the wind of power bends him to 
 the earth, and the greed of the great ones of the world 
 absorbs the sap which should have nourished him. 
 
 Therefore be not like that plant or that solitary tree ; 
 but be united one to another, and lend to one another your 
 mutual support and protection. 
 
 So long as you are disunited, so long as each seeks only 
 his own good, you have nothing to hope for but suffering, 
 misfortune, and oppression. 
 
 Consider the sparrow, how feeble it is ; is there anything 
 more helpless than the swallow ? And yet, let a bird of 
 prey appear amongst them, and they drive it away by crowd- 
 ing round it, and pursuing it all together. 
 
 Learn then from the swallow and from the sparrow. 
 
 If any man separate himself from his brothers, fear 
 follows him in his walking, sits beside him when he is at 
 rest, and does not leave him in sleep. 
 
 If, then, any one asks you : ' How many are there of 
 you ? ' Answer : ' We are one, for our brothers are our- 
 selves, and we are our brothers.' 
 
266 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 For Crod has created neither small nor great, nor 
 masters, nor Blaves, nor kings, nor subjects ; He has made 
 all men equal. 
 
 But amongst men, some are stronger in body, in mind, 
 or in will, and these it is who wish to rule over others, when 
 pride or covetousness have destroyed in them the love of 
 their brothers. 
 
 And God knew that it would be so, and this is why He 
 commanded men to love one another, that they might be 
 united, and that the weak might not fall under the tyranny 
 of the strong. 
 
 For he that is stronger than one is less strong than two, 
 and he that is stronger than two is less strong than four ; 
 and so the weak need fear nothing when, loving one 
 another, they are truly united. 
 
 A man was journeying through the mountains, and he 
 came to a spot where a great rock had rolled across the 
 path, and filled up the whole of it, so that it was impossible 
 to pass it, either on the right hand or on the left. 
 
 Now this man, seeing that he could not continue on his 
 journey because of the rock, tried to roll it aside, and he 
 wearied himself, and all his efforts were vain. 
 
 Seeing this, he sat down full of sadness and said : 
 'What will become of me? For night will come on and 
 will overtake me in this solitude, without food, without 
 shelter or means of defence, at the hour when wild beasts 
 wander abroad in search of their prey.' And as he sat, lost 
 in thought, another traveller came up, and when he had 
 done what the first had done ... he, too, sat down and 
 buried his head in his hands. 
 
 And after him came many others, and none of them 
 could move the rock, and a great fear came upon them. 
 
 Then one of them said to the others : ' My brothers, 
 let us pray to our Father who is in heaven ; perchance He 
 will have pity on us in our trouble.' 
 
 And they heard him, and a prayer went up from their 
 hearts to the Father which is in heaven. 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 267 
 
 And when they had prayed, the same man said : ' My 
 brothers, who knows whether what no one of us could do 
 alone might not be possible to all of us together ? ' 
 
 And they rose up, and all together pushed against the 
 rock, and it gave way, and they continued their journey in 
 peace. 
 
 The traveller is man, the journey is life, the rock is the 
 misery which besets him. 
 
 No man, alone, can move that rock ; but God has so 
 measured the weight of it, that it cannot stand against the 
 united efforts of those who journey together. 
 
 Thus lazily turning over the pages of such a work, 
 we are drawn to it mainly by historic and artistic 
 sympathy. We realise the beauty and the grandeur 
 of it, but it is difficult for us to form any conception 
 of its effect on the minds of contemporary readers. 
 Almost immediately after its appearance, the Baron 
 de Vitrolles sent to Lamennais a list of opinions 
 which he had heard, in conversation, on a book which 
 Eoyer Collard aptly described as '93 going to its 
 E aster Communion. 
 
 ' But how could you have allowed him to publish such 
 a work ? ' 
 
 ' How could I have prevented it ? ' 
 
 ' It is an abominable book, every social principle is 
 attacked in it. How violent, how brilliant it is ! * 
 
 ' There is no such thing as government if the laws are 
 insufficient to condemn the author at the assizes.' 
 
 ' It is sublime, and besides, it is true. Legitimacy is an 
 impious dogma. God is the only legitimate ruler.' 
 
 ' You don't mean to tell me that the Abbe de L. M. is 
 a religious man and a believer ; every doctrine of religion 
 is overthrown in his work, and I have underlined three pas- 
 sages which prove that he is a deist ... at least.' 
 
268 THE ABBE DE LAMENNA1S 
 
 ' The Cabinet has just met, and two hours were given to 
 the discussion of tho advisability of prosecuting the author. 
 Guizot was for the prosecution and M. de Kiguy against it, 
 not because he did not consider it an execrable production, 
 but for fear of scandal, and because he thought it would lead 
 to nothing.' 
 
 ' Chateaubriand, too, said in confidence : I had imagined 
 that in my articles I had said all that could be said . . . but 
 now I am thrown completely into the shade.' 
 
 ' But, said Castelb ... if tho Abbe de Lamennais had 
 read the Gospel.' . . . 
 
 ' What sublimity of thought, what perfection of style ! . . . 
 Language contains nothing to equal the ode, the elegy : 
 La mire ct la fille.' ' 
 
 ' Wha* black fury is in tho chapter on the kings ! . . . 
 that foaming blood, those skulls ! . . . and the description 
 of the seven coffins ! The author has out-heroded Herod, 
 as Hamlet says.' 
 
 ' The best of it all is, that the author is now proved beyond 
 doubt to be mad, and it is to be hoped that ho will soon be 
 shut up in the Petites Maisons. I should not be sorry if 
 Chateaubriand followed him. 1 
 
 ' What a pity that so great a- talent should have been 
 turned away from the defence of sound doctrines, the only 
 ones capable of saving society ! ' 
 
 ' It is tho cross surmounted by the red cap.' 
 
 ' It is the Apocalypse of Satan.' 
 
 'It is Babeuf taken into the service of the prophet 
 Ezekiel' . . . 
 
 Is this enough for you ? I might, if I wished, give you 
 four more pages of it. 
 
 The Baron de Vitrolles was a man of the world, 
 and was capable of a thorough appreciation of the 
 greatness of the book. Not so those of his friends 
 
 1 Ono of tho most beautiful chapters in tho Paroles. Unfortunately 
 the space at my disposal does not permit me to transcribe it. 
 
TEE VOICE OF THE PEOrLE 269 
 
 who had been inspired, in the retirement of a religious 
 life, by the gentle regretfulness of the past, so often 
 suggested in his earlier writings. Mdlle. de Luci- 
 niere, for instance, wrote to him : — 
 
 As for me, poor woman that I am, I cannot understand I 
 how a heart such as yours could have arrived at such a hatred! 
 of authority, since all authority -comes from God. . . . Do read - 
 your beautiful reflection on the thirteenth chapter of the 
 third hook of the ' Imitation.' Reading it yesterday I was 
 deeply impressed by it, and coul ■' ot refrain from fervently 
 offering up for you the prayer v, t terminates it. 
 
 Needless to say this was a prayer for the humility 
 necessary for perfect submission to divinely appointed 
 authority. 
 
 But there was another matter which caused them 
 even deeper pain, filie de Kertanguy had opened a 
 correspondence with the Abbe" Jean do Lamennais, 
 a propos of the Paroles. That exemplary priest 
 seems to have gone far towards reassuring him as to 
 the orthodoxy of the master, when suddenly he re- 
 ceived a further communication from the young dis- 
 ciple, who wrote to him on June 8 : — 
 
 One thing causes me real sorrow ; M. F£li has ceased to 
 say Mass. Not that I look on it as a crime on his part ; his 
 position is so extraordinary ! But I cannot help regretting 
 that he should have imposed so horrible a privation on him- 
 self. Do you think that there is anything in his predictions 
 (on the future of the Church and society) of such a nature 
 that M. Feli can no longer in conscience celebrate the Holy 
 mysteries ? 
 
 Matters had reached this point when a fcesh blow 
 reached him in the encyclical Singulars nos. 
 
270 THE ABBEDE LAMENNAI3 
 
 After a brief recapitulation of the different stages 
 of the officid correspondence, and an allusion to the 
 hopes inspired in him by the absolute submission of 
 December 11, the Holy Father continues : — 
 
 ■• But the hope which we had conceived . . . was altogether 
 I destroyed, when we heard that he had puhlished under cover 
 i of a transparent anonymity, and caused to he spread about 
 everywhere, a hook . . . small indeed in volume, but im- 
 mense in wickedness, entitled Paroles d'un Croyant. 
 
 And in another passage : — 
 
 It is. impossible without horror to read the pages of this 
 
 book, in which the author sets himself to break the bonds of 
 
 fidelity and submission to princes, hurling on every side the 
 
 ; torches of sedition and revolt, provoking the general de- 
 
 \ struction of public order, contempt of the executive, violation 
 
 of the law, and tearing up by the roots the principles of 
 
 i religious and civil authority. After which, in a series of 
 
 assertions, as unjust as they are astounding, ho tries to show 
 
 5. . . . that the authority of princes is contrary to the divine 
 
 law, and even that it is the child of sin, the power of Satan 
 
 himself. 
 
 Then, turning from the matter which was the 
 immediate object of the encyclical, he concludes by 
 a reference to another question which had hitherto 
 been left in the background : — 
 
 Besides, it is very painful to see the extent of the folly 
 i which may lay hold of human reason, when a man allows 
 j himself to be carried away by a love of novelty, and when he 
 i takes upon himself to seek truth outside the Catholic Church, 
 ; where it is to be found without any impure admixture of 
 
 i error. 
 
 You understand, venerable brothers, that wo here speak 
 of that fallacious system of philosophy recently invented, 
 
THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 271 
 
 and of which we altogether disapprove, a system in which, 
 drawn along by a rash, unbridled love of novelty . . . setting 
 aside the holy apostolic traditions, &c. 
 
 This utterance was dated June 25 and published ' 
 on July 15. It does not seem to have made any 
 material difference to the position in which Lamen- 
 nais now found himself. He was warned by influen- 
 tial friends in Home not to take the encyclical as a 
 dogmatic condemnation, and so late as August 2 he 
 wrote to Mdlle. do Luciniore : — 
 
 You are wrong in supposing that the encyclical has been 
 the cause of moral disturbance to me. On the contrary, it 
 is my intention to begin once more to say Mass, as soon as 
 I am assured that I shall»not be -hounded out of the only 
 resting place which remains to me in the world by a public ■ 
 interdiction. 
 
 But that assurance never came. We can hardly 
 restrain our tears when we read this short sad note of 
 tho Abb6 Jean, written as a last attempt to save his 
 brother. It is even more eloquent in its silence than 
 in the thought which is expressed in it, for he, too, 
 was made to suffer in those institutions which had 
 been the work of a lifetime, and which now seemed 
 likely to perish in the storm of calumny and hatred 
 which raged around the name he bore. The letter • 
 was dated July 18, 1834 :— 
 
 I have just come from the altar. I have offered to God 
 the sacrifice of the body and blood of His Son, and have 
 asked Him for that resignation, that tranquillity, that humble 
 courage of which both of us stand in need, at a time when 
 our souls are crashed by a great sorrow. . . . Oh, my poor 
 Fcli, bow I lovo you ! Jean. 
 
272 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 Yes ! Poor Feli ! The loss of an ideal, terrible 
 at any time, is heart-rending when a man, at the age 
 "of fifty-two, is compelled to stand by and gaze in 
 helpless despondency on the destruction of the work 
 of a lifetime. It is, perhaps, fortunate that history 
 has left us no detailed account of what now occurred. 
 The scene is too deep for words, and we welcome the 
 kindly hand which, reaching forward, draws a veil 
 over a sorrow that can only find expression for itself 
 in tears. 
 
273 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC UKCONSTRUCTION 
 
 On June 11, 1834, Lamennais had written to his 
 friend M. Querret : — 
 
 I am dying to see you, my dear friend, that we may 
 talk together of physics and chemistry, as we agreed. My 
 part of the work is ready ; that is to say, I have just finished t 
 jotting -down about eighty pages of" notes on questions rising 
 out of the fundamental problems of the science of beings. I 
 Come as soon as you can, for I must have a talk with you. 
 
 Indeed, he had now arrived at a point in the 
 history of his life when it became necessary for him y 
 to remodel the whole system of his beliefs. This, 
 at the age of fifty-two, was no very easy or very 
 hopeful task, and yet he seems to have set about it 
 with his habitual energy, determined as he was not 
 to allow himself to be crushed under the dead weight 
 of disappointment and misunderstanding which 
 weighed upon him. 
 
 It will be remembered how, at the epoch of the 
 ' Essai sur l'lndifference,' he had laid the foundations 
 of a scientific as opposed 'to a metaphysical treatment 
 of religion ; how he had pointed out that the data of 
 certitude must be sought for, not in the analytical ^ 
 processes of a mind turned in upon itself, but in 
 
 T 
 
274 THE ABBE 1)E LAMENNAIS 
 
 history x in the universal reason, in the phenomenal 
 manifestation of human activity in all its branches. 
 
 In my second chapter I endeavoured, to the best 
 of my ability, to set forth some of the arguments 
 contained in the second, third, and fourth volumes 
 of the Essay, and at the end of that chapter I hinted 
 
 -that the weak point in the system lay in the fact 
 that the author had not sufficiently realised the full 
 meaning of the doctrine of social evolution, and had 
 laid too much stress on the outward expressions or 
 manifestations, and not enough on the inward work- 
 ings, of the social organism. In other words, he had 
 but inadequately grasped the fact of its organic 
 character, and consequently the fabric, the building 
 of which had cost him so much time and trouble, was 
 bound to crumble away as soon as that fact was 
 evolved in the ordinary progress of scientific thought. 
 At a subsequent period in his career this solvent 
 
 "- appeared in the form of Comte's law of the three 
 States, a law which I have already explained, and 
 which, in principle at least, has received the sanction 
 of one of its discoverer's most inveterate opponents, 
 Professor Huxley. For that brilliant writer, in his 
 essay on the Origin of Sjiccies, in the ' Lay Sermons,' 
 page 245, lucidly expressed it when he said that : — 
 
 The hypothesis of special creation is not only a mere 
 specious mask for our ignorance ; its existence in biology 
 marks the youth and imperfection of the science. For what 
 is the history of every science but the history of the elimina- 
 tion of the notion of creative or other interferences, with the 
 natural order of the phenomena, which are the subject 
 matter of that science ? When astronomy was young the 
 
PHILOSOPHIC RECONSTRUCTION 275 
 
 morning stars sang together for joy, and the planets were 
 guided in their courses by celestial hands. Now the harmony 
 of the stars has resolved itself into gravitation, according to 
 the inverse squares of the distances, and the orbits of the 
 planets are deducible from the laws of the forces, which 
 allow a schoolboy's stone to break a window. The lightning 
 was the angel cf the Lord, but it has pleased Providence, in 
 these modern times, that science should make it the humble 
 messenger of man, and we know that every flash that 
 shimmers about the horizon on a summer's evening is 
 determined by ascertainable conditions, and that its direction 
 and brightness might, if our knowledge of these were great 
 enough, have been calculated. 
 
 Indeed, this i,,.,, in a general sense, might be 
 summed up in the proposition that there is a moving " 
 and ascertainable scale in the ordering of all forms of 
 physical knowledge, in accordance with which, religion 
 offers a solution of succeeding series or combinations 
 of facts, pending their eventual explanation by science. 
 And I need hardly point out, in the present attitude 
 of the thinking world, that such an interpretation 
 of the laws of progressive thought in no way interferes 
 with the dicta of theology, considered as an authori- 
 tative system, though it interferes very much with 
 the arguments for the validity of such a system, 
 or with what has been termed natural religion. 
 Had the author of the 'Essay on Indifference' 
 arrived at a thorough understanding of this fact, 
 he would have seen that it added considerably to 
 the cogency of his argument, for while, on the one' 
 hand, a tradition which was merely handed down 
 from the earliest times might be looked on as repre- 
 
276 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 senting provisional or nursery doctrine, doomed to 
 
 disappearance under the influence of the law of the 
 
 three States, it would have been far otherwise could 
 
 it have been shown that certain doctrines were the 
 
 i legitimate, the only possible development from the 
 
 J primitive ideas, and that their evolution bore a direct 
 
 Und necessary relation to the evolution of humanity. 
 
 It is true that such a demonstration could in no 
 way justify us in assuming the truth of the doctrines 
 themselves, for they in their turn might be provi- 
 sional. But, could it be shown that they had been 
 actually and consistently developed under the sanc- 
 tion of a visible organisation, claiming to act as a 
 criterion, very much as do the manifestations of force 
 in geology, biology, or any other science, it would go 
 far towards proving the validity of that claim. And 
 I think that the argument would become absolutely 
 conclusive if it could be shown that the questions, 
 the solution of which that authority had set before 
 itself, must be eternally present to the human mind 
 as a blessing or a curse, according to the point of 
 view from which they are approached ; the individual, 
 which leads to mental anarchy, futile self-sufficiency, 
 petty arrogance, morbid mysticism, faddism, and God 
 knows what besides; or the collective standpoint, 
 which, laying hold of this otherwise most pernicious 
 tendency in human nature, tames it, socialises it, and 
 makes possible its healthy and progressive co-operation 
 with the demands of the ever-evolving social organism. 
 
 In other words, though the doctrines could not 
 possibly claim our acceptance on their own authority, 
 
PHILOSOPHIC RECONSTRUCTION 277 
 
 we cannot help accepting them, if it can be shown 
 that they result from a criterion as sure, as impera- 
 tive, as anything in nature. 
 
 Now I think that this is abundantly demonstrated 
 in the case of the Catholic Church, and I hope some 
 day to enter more fully into the matter. But- for the 
 present we must content ourselves with the consider- . 
 ation of it in its relation to Lamennais. He had 
 undoubtedly been the first to suggest such a treat- -^T 
 ment of religion, and we cannot blame him if he 
 could not see to the end of the principle he advocated, 
 and if the further development of it was left to the 
 great genius who founded the Religion of Humanity; 
 yet even here there is one point in which he is supe- 
 rior to Comte, for that writer thought it possible ^hat 
 the evolution of thought might eventually lead to the 
 complete disappearance of the supernatural element 
 in religion, whereas Lamennais was never able to rid 1 
 himself of an idea, beautifully expressed in a work 
 which appeared at a date somewhat posterior, it is 
 true, to that at which we have now arrived, but which 
 was probably written in great part at this time, the 
 Discussions critiques et Peusdes diverses (1841), in 
 which, after describing the untold possibilities in 
 scientific discovery which presented themselves to 
 the men of his day, he adds : ' Then they will once 
 more become conscious of their ignorance. The 
 human mind will have moved on, immense dominions 
 will have been added to its conquests ; but from the 
 frontiers of its empire it will see a new horizon, a 
 horizon leading off into endless space ; as before, the 
 
278 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 infinite will be before it. Wearied by its labours, it will 
 rest awhile ; it will plunge once more into the mystery 
 which surrounds it, and a new era of faith will begin.' 
 
 These things being so, I think we may safely 
 assume that had Lamennais approached the subject 
 in his later days, when his thoughts were matured 
 and his ideas corrected by a wider experience and 
 deeper learning, he would have done much to counter- 
 act the shortcomings of the 'Essay on Indifference.' 
 For he had the inestimable advantage of being a 
 Catholic, an adherent of the only system of religion 
 capable of the treatment here indicated ; and there is 
 abundant evidence that the progress of his mind was 
 leading him to some such conclusion. 
 
 We have seen how, during the years which imme- 
 diately followed the appearance of his great Catholic 
 work, his mind began to progress steadily in this 
 direction. Whether we see it in his growing ap- 
 preciation of the Ultramontane or organic view of 
 Catholicism, his articles on Comte in the ' Memorial 
 Catholique,' his personal relations with that philo- 
 sopher, his acceptance of the principle that society is 
 governed, not by those who seem to rule, but by ideas 
 generally ixrevalod, whose results may be calculated, 
 just as in the material world the results of physical 
 forces ; the classification of the sciences in his Pro- 
 arts de la licvolutiou, or in the general tenor of the 
 movement which bears his name, we cannot but be 
 struck by this fact. Nor had this process of mental 
 evolution come to an end at the period we have 
 reached, and the letter quoted at the beginning of 
 
PHILOSOPHIC RECONSTRUCTION 279 
 
 this chapter is but one out of innumerable evidences 
 that he was still moving in the same direction. 
 
 Everything then tends to force us to the conclu- 
 sion that, had this state of things continued, Comte's 
 historic and scientific appreciation of Catholicism 
 would have been propounded from a Catholic point 
 of view, with the result that all later thought in 
 religious matters would have been considerably 
 modified. 
 
 It seems an irony of fate that the fulfilment of 
 this idea should have become finally impossible at 
 the very moment when it had almost reached matu- 
 rity. For, in ceasing to be a Catholic, Lamennais had; 
 destroyed the only foundation on which a construc- 
 tion such as that which he had proposed to himself 
 could be based, namely, an authority standing to ' 
 ideas about the supernatural in the same relation as 
 the criteria of any science to the facts of that science. I 
 In other words, he found himself in that fatal posi- 
 tion so often and so graphically described in his 
 writings : he was alone, and was compelled not only 
 to live and to act alone, but to think alone, and he 
 must have been painfully reminded of those terrible 
 and closely reasoned denunciations which had charac- 
 terised his early utterances. 
 
 Thus it happened that that great work on religion 
 and society, the contents of which he had for so long 
 been turning over in his mind, and which is so often , 
 hinted at in his correspondence, had now to be en- 
 tirely altered in its scope and object. It is evident, 
 from his own letters and from those of his friends, 
 
280 TTIE ABBE DE LAMI'SXAIS 
 
 that while he was living with his little community at 
 La Ch6naie, the book was rapidly passing through its 
 j final stages ; that men like Gerbet and Kohrbacher 
 iwere co-operating in th« work, and that a month or 
 two would see it in the hands of the printers. It is 
 for this reason, and because the years employed in 
 its composition mark a period of transition in the 
 author's mind, that I speak of it now, though its 
 publication was inevitably postponed by the necessity 
 of rewriting the greater part of it. 
 
 In fact, the first three volumes of the Esquisse 
 cVune Philosoplrie were not published till 1841. It 
 was not till five years later that the public were in 
 possession of the fourth, and to these were added a 
 supplementary volume, which is in reality little more 
 than a sketch of the two concluding divisions of the 
 subject, as originally planned out in the author's 
 mind. 
 
 It is impossible to turn over the pages of these 
 ponderous tomes without being deeply impressed by 
 the profound change which has taken place, and by 
 the painful evidences of a no less profound degenera- 
 tion. And yet this falling off does not seem to lie 
 so much in the man as in the circumstances in which 
 he found himself. On the contrary, there is not a 
 page in the Esquisse which does not bear traces of 
 distinct mental development. There are signs of 
 preciseness, of lucidity, and of consistency in thought 
 which are almost altogether absent from the Essay 
 on Indifference, while, even in the more imaginative 
 portions of tbe book, he is less redundant, more 
 
PHILOSOPHIC RECONSTRUCTION 1 281 
 
 economical, and therefore infinitely more vivid in 
 his descriptions. 
 
 Indeed, I think that it is rather in the subject 
 than in the author's treatment of it that the modern 
 reader finds cause for irritation. Finding himself, 
 cut off from the only possible criterion, he saw nOj 
 way out of the difficulty but to re-establish, one after 1 ) 
 the other, most of those propositions the futility \ 
 of which he had triumphantly demonstrated in his | 
 earlier' work. What, for instance, could be more* 
 devoid of philosophic meaning, and yet more poetic- 
 ally beautiful, than this passage from the sixth- - 
 chapter of the first book.? — 
 
 That which exists necessarily, that which is one, infinite, 
 eternal, in a word, Being, is God. He is He who is ; that is 
 His Name, an incommunicable name, which, resounding 
 from world to world, moves in the universe as life itself. 
 It is uttered in every language, it is murmured in every 
 sound. From the bosom of Creation, at the dawn of time, 
 the voice of Eternity began to repeat it, and the stars, 
 moved by celestial power, still write it through the realms 
 of space in letters of fire. 
 
 Philosophers have vainly spent their lives, they have 
 sounded the depths of reason to prove that God exists. 
 What folly ! God is by nature indemonstrable. Is it pos- 
 sible to demonstrate the existence of Being without presup- 
 posing it? This first notion, from which all others come, 
 has no basis but itself. It cannot be deduced from any- 
 thing anterior ; and when we persuade ourselves that we are 
 striving to reach it, we still assume it as our starting-point. 
 For whence can we deduce a unity which is at once 
 infinite and necessary ? What we can prove is relative ; 
 the Absolute is beyond proof. Its foundation is in itself, 
 and it is thus that it is the foundation of everything. For 
 
282 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 what is demonstration ? It is the showing that a thing is 
 contained in something else, that, if certain conditions are 
 granted, it is relatively necessary. Therefore, what is abso- 
 lutely necessary, that which contains everything and is con- 
 tained by nothing, is obviously indemonstrable. 
 
 But if God cannot be proved, that does not justify us in 
 
 - denying His existence. Without this primitive idea of 
 
 Being there could be no thought, no speech. Seen in our 
 
 first thought, proclaimed in our earliest utterance, He is the 
 
 foundation of our understanding. . . . 
 
 Starting from this, the author, making use of it 
 as a skeleton, proceeds to develop his system of the 
 universe, not however before he has committed him- 
 self to a further proposition, even more arbitrary and 
 less tenable, if that were possible, than the first. 
 
 Assuming the existence of God in the sense here 
 indicated, it was necessary that there should be 
 present in the idea itself the possibility of creation, 
 and, as it were, a divine shadowing forth or picturing 
 of the whole scheme of the physical universe, from 
 the simplest chemical combinations to human society. 
 And so he was led to establish, on the unwarrantable 
 basis of unfathomable mysticism, the fruitful hypo- 
 thesis of a Trinity of divir 3 persons, dividing and 
 specialising the possible activities of the divine sub- 
 stance, breaking into and disturbing the eternal 
 silence of a cold and lifeless unity. 
 
 And, in support of this, he makes use of an 
 argument which bears a far off resemblance to the 
 fundamental propositions of the ' Essay on Indiffer- 
 ence,' but which, through the alteration in his circum- 
 
PHILOSOPHIC RECONSTRUCTION 283. 
 
 stances, has entirely lost its force, even, I think, to, 
 the author himself. 
 
 So many men, he says, in the seventh chapter, whose ! 
 names will be for ever great, cannot have lived and worked ( 
 in vain ; and society above everything, society, guided by a \ 
 secret intuition of truth, which is the surest foundation . . . I 
 cannot, unless reason itself is a chimera, have been deceived ■ 
 by an illusion of eighteen centuries duration. 
 
 ft- 1 
 
 And he continues : — 
 
 . . . The notion of infinite Being necessarily includes > 
 that of three distinct properties co-existing in it, and there- J 
 fore related to one another in an order, not of succession 
 but of principle. Since, considered in its substance, infinite 
 Being is an absolute unity, it follows that each of its pro- ' 
 perties is substantially the whole of Being, and, as these I 
 same properties are essentially distinct from one another, it J 
 follows . . . that Power is neither Intelligence nor Love, j 
 and is the whole of Being ; that Intelligence is neither 
 Power nor Love, and is the whole of Being ; that Love is 
 neither Power nor Intelligence, and is the whole of Being; , 
 in other words, that Power, Intelligence, Love are severally 
 characterised, in the unity of absolute Being, by something 
 which exclusively belongs to each of them, and consequently 
 subsist in that Unity, in a maimer individually distinct from 
 one another. Now, individuality which is at once intelli- 
 gent, and determined by something essential and permanent, 
 constitutes the notion of a person, and this in its turn pre- 
 supposes a basis in substance, whence it draws its reality, 
 its effective and radical being. Hence it follows that there 
 are three persons in the unity of absolute Being ; and these 
 three persons, coexisting in the substance which is one and 
 infinite, are God. . . . 
 
 Of these three divine Persons ... we must conceive! 
 Power as the principle of the two others ; for Power, or that 
 
284 THE ABBE DE LAMEXNAIS 
 
 ) by which everything that is is, necessarily precedes every- 
 thing which exists only through it. 
 
 And since nothing precedes it, it draws from itself 
 everything that owes to it its being, that is to say, it gives 
 
 \ birth to it. . . . Intelligence in its relation to the efficient 
 
 ; principle which produces its manifestation in God is then 
 bom of Power ; whence it follows that Power stands to 
 Intelligence as the Father, while manifested Intelligence, 
 Light, the "Word, &c, is the Son. For human language 
 offers no better expression for the necessary relations of 
 these two first Persons. Love, on the other hand, cannot 
 be given birth to, for it implies two terms, reciprocally, 
 equally active, the Father loving the Son, the Son loving 
 the Father ; it goes from the Father to the Son and from 
 
 ; the Son to the Father ; it proceeds from each of them. Its 
 name, the only one which can describe its equal relation to 
 the two first Persons, whose mutual bond it is, and the 
 expression of their aspiration one towards the other, is the 
 Spirit. 
 
 Thus he sets himself to establish, on what he 
 " considers a firmer basis, the time-honcured doctrines 
 of Catholic Christianity; doctrines which, though fun- 
 damentally pregnant with useful results as the first 
 utterances of an authoritative system, become, when 
 propounded on their own authority, the basis of all 
 possible forms of mystical extravagance the starting- 
 point of unhealthy, futile speculations, in matters 
 which are utterly beyond the domain of human 
 reason. 
 
 But when we pass from these irritating subtleties 
 to the practical application of the results to the 
 phenomena of the physical universe, we cannot but 
 be impressed by the power of thought and poetry 
 
PHILOSOPHIC RECONSTRUCTION 285 
 
 which is manifested in the pages of this work, 
 and we begin to realise what the world lost when 
 Lamennais separated himself from the Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 Leaving the uncertain ground of metaphysics, he 
 now asks us to descend with him into the arena of 
 actual fact, and bringing to bear on it all that was 
 in him of deep learning, of thought, and of brilliant 
 imagination, he slowly but systematically lays before 
 us, in all its manifestations, the working out in all 
 things of these three principles : the principle of 
 power or force ; the principle of intelligence or form, 
 of light, of colour.; and that other, which results 
 from the relations of these two, the principle of love, 
 affinity, which manifests itself in physical attraction, 
 chemical combination, human sympathy, &c. 
 
 And it is in the second of these that he achieved 
 his greatest success. 
 
 The volume which contains his speculations on 
 this part of his subject has come down to us in a 
 separate form, and will probably continue to live 
 under its present title, Dc V Art _et du Bean. For 
 this notion of the Second Person of the Trinity, the 
 principle of intelligence, of form, of colour, found its 
 highest expression in those things which men call 
 beautiful in nature and in art. 
 
 And so it happens that after wearily making our 
 way through those first dreary volumes, where 
 science and mysticism are strangely mingled, we 
 suddenly find ourselves transported to a beautiful 
 dreamland, the meeting-ground of the creations of 
 
286 
 
 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 God and man, where there is no fact, no picture, no 
 criticism which does not compel us to admit that 
 what is passing before us is the work of a master 
 hand. 
 
 Architecture, sculpture, painting, dancing or rhyth- 
 mic movement, music, poetry, &c, all are dealt with, 
 and each has its place in the general plan by which, 
 according to the author, all things have their origin 
 and their fulfilment in God, and it follows from the 
 | same scheme of the universe that each of the arts, 
 [besides its own natural evolution, has its place in the 
 .separate periods of human history, and an epoch in 
 which it reaches its highest point either in its own 
 jgrowth, or in relation to the other arts, a moment 
 jwhen it is the paramount expression of the religious 
 I instinct, which is the fundamental test of a civilisa- 
 I tion. 
 
 Thus, for instance, sculpture reached its culmi- 
 nating point in the period of Greek ascendency, and 
 gave rise to an architecture strictly subordinated to 
 it; while, on the other hand, with the growth of 
 Christianity this state of things was completely re- 
 versed. As with these, so also with all the others, 
 and there is nothing among the possible productions 
 of human genius which does not in some way mark 
 all the progress of man from the more primitive to 
 the more complicated forms of social organisation, 
 i and this is shown to have been a fact in the case of 
 each of them in turn, from the art of dancing or 
 | rhythmic movement, which accompanied the earliest 
 (expressions of the religious aspiration, to that of 
 
 ) 
 
PHILOSOPHIC RECONSTRUCTION 287 
 
 oratory, which obtained its highest recognition in 
 France at the time of the Eevolution. His descrip- 
 tion of this last is, I think, worthy of quotation : — 
 
 Eloquence, which till then had been excluded from the 
 political world, suddenly breaking into it, made of it its 
 principal domain ; it reigned there as a sovereign. Never 
 before had the power of- speech been so abundantly made 
 manifest. It destroyed a civilisation and created a new one. 
 None of those things which time had given strength to, or 
 which custom, opinion, maimers had made sacred, were able 
 to stand before it. Government, laws, institutions were 
 overthrown ;■ it , carried all before it as a torrent roaring 
 along, and bounding over the steep broken sides of a 
 mountain, carries away the hut which a shepherd has built 
 by its banks. And *as the ■ old building crumbles away, a 
 new one is raised on the site of it. Some plastic virtue 
 seems to be hidden in the ruins. A mysterious breath 
 moves among the social debris imbuing them with life, but 
 in rising from the tomb it is completely changed. The 
 peoples had advanced along the paths of civilisation bent 
 under the yoke of servitude and egotistical privilege ; they j 
 rise again in the name- of liberty, of equality, of fraternity, i 
 The spirit of Christianity has revolted against the principles 
 of paganism and has finally triumphed. . . . 
 
 At the distance of time from which we contemplate the 
 instruments of Providence, in the fulfilment of its designs, 
 the actors in that great drama assume superhuman propor- 
 tions. Like to those giant beings whose battlings in the 
 dark bosom of primitive creation are related in the poems of 
 India, they appear to our dazzled imaginations in forms at 
 once wild, colossal, and strange. To whom can we compare 
 them ? To what orators of preceding ages ? No speech is 
 like to theirs, ardent, impetuous, unrestrained ; it flashes 
 like lightning, roars as the tempest, overflows like the sea 
 rising with the tidal wave, burns and devours as a fire. If 
 we wish to picture to ourselves the effect of this extraordinary 
 
288 THE AUIlE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 ebullition of the power of speech, we must not think of men, 
 for each of them, however great, was hut an echo ; we must, 
 understand it in all its expressions and in all its contrasts, 
 in its harmonies and its discords, its movements, so diverse, 
 so sudden, so unexpected, the immensities of its ebb and flow, 
 in its infinite variety and its formidable unity. But then, 
 when its work was done, it sank once more into silence, and 
 what has been heard since has been but a feeble, far-off 
 echo of it. 
 
 On the other hand, nothing could be more delight- 
 ful than the description of Arabesque architecture in 
 the third chapter of this volume :— 
 
 Mahommetan peoples have never produced a religious 
 architecture. Why is this? It is because their religion, 
 which is pure deism, presupposes a fundamental separation 
 between God and His works, and presents Him to the imagi- 
 nation neither in Himself nor in His relation to the creation, 
 losing Him in the impenetrable darkness of absolute 
 unity. ... 
 
 But, if Islam has given birth to no religious archi- 
 tecture, if it has not been able to express a thought which is 
 foreign to it, the civilised Arab has wrung from his native 
 genius other monuments in which art, whatever it may have 
 borrowed from Byzantium or from Hindostan, is turned into 
 new channels. Born under a burning sky, in a country 
 partly characterised by arid mountains and by sandy plains, 
 broken only here and there by a rare oasis, this people owed 
 to its climate, to the habits which resulted from it, and to 
 the manners it gave birth to, the principal features which 
 distinguish them. Living in tents, and too often driven to 
 take from others by rapine what their climate denied them, 
 wandering as they did from place to place, on horseback or 
 on camels, without ever settling down, it was but natural 
 that their national character should have been marked by a 
 spirit of independence, by audacious courage, and by personal 
 pride. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC RECONSTRUCTION 289 
 
 Knowing no bonds of union but those of the family and "f 
 of the tribe, hospitality alone connected them with humanity, 
 from which they were cut off by their isolated and nomadic 
 existence. Eoused to activity only on the day of battle . . . 
 at all other times driven in upon himself, motionless under 
 the folds of his woollen mantle, the Arab concentrated all\ 
 his energies on the life of the soul. The very simplicity of 
 that primitive state turned him from science. What re- 1 
 mained to him then V Poetry : but a singular poetry, in-" 
 harmony with his sun, his burning deserts. . . . Going 
 where his fancy led him, he created, that he might dwell in 
 them, regions at once beautiful and enchanting. His vivid 
 imagination peopled the universe with invisible beings. . . . 
 Nothing in the world around him suggested to him the great | 
 forces of nature. He substituted for them forces of another 
 order, personified, arbitrary, free, independent of the fatal! 
 laws of inferior creation, and when, panting on the bare; 
 earth, in a burnt up atmosphere, he wandered through the 
 by-paths of an unbridled fancy, he loved to picture to him- 
 self water and shade, a soft uncertain light, the rays of! 
 which, piercing the thick leafage on the banks of a limpid 
 stream, lulled him into a dreamland of luxury and coolness. / 
 And this, for him, was the perfect type of beauty in ; 
 nature. 
 
 These things it was which gave rise to Arabesque archi- ~~ 
 tecture. It is like a beautiful dream, shimmering at the 
 caprice of genii through a network of stone, in those delicate 
 cuttings, those light fringes, those fleeting lines, that lace- 
 work in which the eye is lost in pursuit of a symmetry which 
 seems always near, but which ever eludes it in a perpetual 
 graceful movement. These varied forms appear to us as a 
 vegetation at once powerfully characterised and fantastic ; it 
 is not nature, but it is a dream of it. The veiled light 
 breaks in upon us in a series of colours gently mingling and 
 producing the effect of an ethereal softness, born of this fairy 
 world and increasing the illusion of it. In the murmuring 
 risulets, in the bubbling springs, there is a subtle influence 
 
 U 
 
290 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 which soothes the senses. If love, a love more passionate, 
 more sensual than tender, breathes through all the intri- 
 cacies of this magnificent palace, it is that the whole life of 
 the Arab is there, pictured and idealised. Of a dogmatic 
 explanation of things, of social thought, there is no sign. 
 This delightful abode is destined only for the individual, and 
 recalls only him. The hospitable customs of the sons of 
 Ishmael have also their expression, but it is one which is 
 more suited to a primitive state. On the dried-up roadways 
 of the desert, wherever there is a spring and a few palm- 
 trees, a hut is raised and a place of rest for the traveller. 
 
 But it is not till we arrive at a later part of this work 
 that we begin to understand its real value as a fruitful 
 theory of life. The Holy Spirit, or the principle of 
 love, cohesion, chemical affinity, &c, offers in this 
 respect the greatest scope for the author's construc- 
 tive genius, and this in great measure accounts for 
 the peculiar fascination which holds us, as we wander 
 through the concluding volumes, the fourth of the 
 ' Esquisse,' and the supplementary treatise of which 
 I have already spoken. Indeed, the first of these 
 owes so much of its interest to the wealth of scientific 
 illustration brought to bear on the subject by the 
 author, that it is with no small regret that I submit 
 to the necessities of space and time and confine 
 myself to the last, which is more immediate in its 
 practical results. 
 
 For this supplementary volume, which is entitled 
 De la SocidU Premiere et tie ses Lois, or De la 
 Religion, is but an application of the principles which 
 hold good in chemistry and in the earlier sciences to 
 the culminating science of society, which, if it com- 
 
PHILOSOPHIC RECONSTRUCTION 291 
 
 pletes, also presupposes the others ; and it is here 
 that it becomes evident, that if there are funda- 
 mental differences, there are many points in which 
 he is in striking agreement with Comte. 
 
 And I think that in this a typical passage will 
 best illustrate what I mean : — 
 
 The universe [he says in his first chapter] is but a 
 vast society in which each being- in unison with all the 
 others, as a separate organ in a living body, exercises its 
 own peculiar functions, which are necessary to the pre- 
 servation and development of the whole ; and thus society 
 resolves itself into the principle of unity. . . . Nevertheless, 
 it is not pure unity, but is derived from it ; is the expression 
 of it, and draws from it its essential character. 
 
 It is not pure unity, for pure unity which is absolute 
 excludes all relations and consequently all society. Society 
 implies multiplicity, for, if we are to be united, we must be 
 many. It also implies diversity. Can we conceive a society 
 of beings, numerically distinct but otherwise identical '? 
 Were this the case, each of them, imprisoned in itself, 
 individually invariable in the plenitude of its being, in- 
 capable of receiving or of communicating anything, would 
 be without bond of union with the others, being inde- 
 pendent of them, as they of it, in the solitude of existence. 
 
 In its most general aspect then, society represents, in 
 the multiplicity and diversity of beings, the principle which, 
 according to the laws of their respective natures, draws 
 them together, so that, little by little, they should be 
 brought to that universal unity which, outside God, repre- 
 sents His internal, absolute, infinite oneness. These two 
 being the elements from the combination of which results 
 society, on the one hand unity, and on the other diversity 
 and multiplicity, it is clear that the last should be subor- 
 dinate to the first, for unity is the final end, while multi- 
 plicity and diversity is, if 1 may use the expression, only 
 
292 the abbe de lamennais 
 
 the material which unity has to bring under its laws, though 
 without destroying it . . . since that would mean the de- 
 struction of society itself. 
 
 Thus, corresponding to the radical conditions of exist- 
 ence in its two modes, infinite and finite, everything pre- 
 supposes it ; it is necessary with the same necessity as 
 being, although indefinitely variable in its manifestations 
 in the bosom of creation, where, suiting itself to the differ- 
 ences of individual beings, it is modified in accordance with 
 their nature, and reveals itself under as many forms as 
 there are diversities in their nature. . . . Hence the separate 
 legislations in each class, each genus, each species of beings ; 
 hence the growing complication as they ascend in the scale 
 of organised life ; and these fragmentary legislations, bound 
 together by ties which order determines, form in their har- 
 monious fulness the legislation of the universe. 
 
 if Indeed, it is this idea of the universal necessity 
 of society, whether seen in Nature or in God, that 
 : '=. we must hear in mind, if we are to understand the 
 i. religious inspiration of the later years of Lamennais' 
 life. There is much in his treatment of the subject 
 which forcibly suggests the thought and method of 
 the founder of Positivism ; while such phrases as 
 the groining complication as they ascend in the scale 
 of organised life, almost seem to be borrowed from the 
 reasonings which led to the famous and much ahused 
 classification of the sciences. But it requires no very 
 deep penetration to see that, in their basis, the two 
 writers differ fundamentally from one another. 
 
 Lamennais, as we have seen, makes the God whom 
 he has constructed with admirable subtlety the 
 beginning and end of all things. It is true that he 
 does face the actual problems of the universe, and 
 
PHILOSOPHIC RECONSTRUCTION 293 
 
 that he challenges criticism in the domain of physical 
 science ; but we feel that these things are strictly 
 subordinate, and that the author is hurrying us 
 through our demonstration, hoping, when his God has 
 been accepted, to lay these things aside, only holding 
 to such facts of science as may be useful in illustra- 
 tion. 
 
 Comte, on. the other hand, lays his greatest stress 
 precisely on those facts which Lamennais made use 
 of. To him they are everything; to the author of 
 the ' Esquisse'' they are merely stepping-stones to 
 something else. The value of Comte's work lay in 
 this, that he suggested a method by which religion 
 might be brought under a scientific treatment, making 
 it possible to predict the kind of religious expression 
 which would be likely to appear under given cir- 
 cumstances of social evolution ; and, contrariwise, 
 what social results would be likely to follow from 
 predominance of certain forms of religious belief. 
 That he pursued that method, and arrived at the con- 
 clusion that a normal state of society must be 
 accompanied by a normal religion, that is to say, by 
 a religion which has been evolved under similar cir- 
 cumstances, and which corresponds to it in all its 
 details. The only system in modern times which, in 
 my opinion, fulfils this condition, is the Catholic 
 Church, which, for reasons I have already hinted at, 
 is capable of expanding and developing without 
 destroying itself. 
 
 The theory is certainly inconsistent with anything 
 which is the work of the brain of a single man, as 
 
294 
 
 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 was the God of the Esquisse d'une Philosophie. And 
 it is this which accounts for the fact that Lamennais' 
 later religious opinions are now remembered by no 
 one, though in his Catholic days, little as he knew it, 
 he had destroyed an old world and created a new 
 . one. For the details of a religious system the cus- 
 toms and doctrines which seem to some to obscure 
 what men consider a central truth, are usually the 
 only channels which connect such a system with the 
 civilisations through which it has passed in the 
 course of its evolution. To set these aside is to 
 destroy the idea of which they may seem to be only 
 the external setting, to deprive it of its meaning. 
 Comte dwelt on the details, and he has been blamed 
 for doing so. Perhaps he was right. At least the 
 universal shipwreck of jyurified systems in modern 
 times would seem to point to this conclusion. 
 
 But if Lamennais failed through the fact that he 
 was no longer a Catholic, if he lost himself in the 
 aimless wanderings of an unbridled mysticism, we are 
 none the less forced to recognise the real speculative 
 power which gave rise to this immense conception 
 of an universal principle of evolution working itself 
 out in the subject-mutter of all the sciences, from 
 the lowest to the highest, from the simplest to the 
 most complicated. In his expression of this, and of 
 that other idea, the manifestation of society in all 
 phenomena, he leaves far behind him the foremost 
 contemporary writers, not excluding Comte. 
 
 It is impossible, then, not to regret that all this 
 depth and conciseness of thought should have been 
 
PHILOSOPHIC RECONSTRUCTION 295 
 
 practically thrown away, made unpalatable and inad- 
 missible to the modern reader, by the fact that it 
 took as its starting-point a series of propositions 
 which are not merely untenable, but which saturate 
 with a mystical venom all that comes into contact 
 with them, and a fortiori, all that is made to rest on 
 them.. 
 
 It is this which makes it difficult to deal with the 
 concluding period of this extraordinary life. On the 
 one hand, there is a perseverance, a consistency of 
 purpose, and an almost heroic struggle for the realisa- 
 tion of an ideal ; on the other, emptiness, anarchy, 
 despondency ; and, ' with 'all this, there is not a 
 moment in which we cannot sympathise with him, 
 hoping against hope that he will formulate his theory 
 of life, and that he will do something towards the 
 attainment of those objects which have now become 
 paramount to him. But we instinctively feel that 
 this cannot be, and that events are rapidly hurrying 
 us to the closing scene of a terrible tragedy. 
 
 Before passing to the narration of these events, 
 there is one circumstance which should be borne in 
 mind. It will be remembered that in his Catholic 
 days, when he was the recognised leader of the Ultra- 
 montane party, Lamennais had been on friendly 
 terms with the founder of the Religion of Humanity, 
 and that each had been inspired with the deepest 
 respect for the other. When he severed his connec- 
 tion with the Church, a coldness sprang up between 
 them, and it is stated by M. Lafitte that this in- 
 creased as the former champion of Catholicism 
 
296 
 
 THE ABBE DE LAMENXAIS 
 
 drifted further and further in the direction of the 
 Revolution. 
 
 This chapter, then, may be fittingly concluded by 
 an extract from a letter published by Mr. Wilfrid 
 Ward in his volume on Dr. Ward and the Oxford 
 movement. The circumstances which led to the 
 writing of it were as follows : — 
 
 Shortly after the. period at which we have arrived 
 both Comte and Lamennais took part in a State 
 trial, as advocates of the party which the Govern- 
 ment was endeavouring to get legally condemned. 
 After the conclusion of the proceedings, which had 
 been marked by many stormy episodes, the two men 
 met for the first time since tbe fundamental change 
 I have described had come about in the opinions of 
 the latter. ' So we have come to anarchy,' said 
 the philosopher; and the ex-priest sadly nodded 
 acquiescence. 
 
 About ten years later, in England, W. G. Ward 
 became a convert to the Catholic faith, and he pre- 
 pared his friends for the act by the publication of his 
 Ideal of a Christian Church, in the course of which 
 he spoke in praise both of J. S. Mill and of Auguste 
 Comte, the last of whom he recognised as having 
 surpassed the best Catholic writers in his appreciation 
 of the historic position of Catholicism. Mill wrote to 
 Comte to inform him of the fact, and the Frenchman . 
 answered in a letter which contains this remarkable 
 passage : — 
 
 At the outset of my philosophic career . . .in 1825 I was 
 judged, almost as I have now been by Mr. Ward, by the too 
 
PHILOSOPHIC RECONSTRUCTION 297 
 
 famous Abbe" de Lainennais, who was then in his true 
 normal state as the upright and energetic leader of an 
 avowed Catholic reaction. . . . You know what happened 
 to my eminent antagonist, whom I met ten years ago on a 
 characteristic occasion, when I was forced, having myself in 
 no way changed, to recognise a shameful ally (une sorte 
 d'allie hunteux) in the man- who had formerly seemed to me 
 an estimable adversary. In the logical inconsequence which 
 marks the present time, I should not be surprised if your new 
 Catholic underwent, perhaps more quickly, a similar degene- 
 ration, though I sincerely hope that he will not do so. 
 
 Many of my 1 readers will agree with me in reject- 
 ing Comte's statement that Catholicism is essentially 
 retrograde, but this will- not prevent a thorough 
 appreciation of the full force of this interesting judg- 
 ment, especially if we compare it with the fact, stated 
 by M. Lafitte, on the authority of a personal friend 
 both of himself and of Lainennais, that the latter 
 never spoke of Positivism in his later years but in 
 terms of contempt as that jthilosopluj. 
 
 These things, I think, confirm what I have said 
 of the philosophic results of Lainennais' lamentable 
 fall from the principles he had defended in his earlier 
 days. 
 
29 8 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 A LIFE OF SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, '48 
 
 As the immediate result of the series of events which 
 had marked the period following the condemnation 
 of the Avenir, Lamennais had now completely 
 changed his point of view, and he prepared, without 
 reserve, to identify himself with the revolutionary 
 movement. 
 
 The first steps in his new career were not at all 
 encouraging, for his change of attitude involved the 
 breaking of many of those ties of friendship which 
 still bound him to the past, and increased his bitter- 
 ness against those ideals which had been the occasion 
 of their formation, and to which his own genius had 
 given birth. 
 
 Lacordaire had already left him, but Montalem- 
 "bert still clung, with all the affection of which his 
 ardent nature was capable, to the master to whom 
 he owed everything which gave meaning and value 
 to life. He still hoped that it might be possible to 
 save him, and he seems to have been prepared to 
 sacrifice everything rather than desert the man 
 whom even now he looked upon as an inspired 
 teacher of mankind. Lacordaire wrote to him, warn- 
 ing him of the danger of the course he was pursuing, 
 
A LIFE OP SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, '48 299 
 
 but he seemed deaf to the pleadings of his former 
 friend. Lamennais was bitter, sarcastic, and advised 
 him never to sacrifice his freedom as a layman. 
 Lacordaire was gentle and persuasive, and set before 
 him, with that power and eloquence of which he 
 alone was capable, the claims of the Catholic Church ; 
 yet_he hesitated, and seemed inclined to identify 
 himself with the stormy career which was now about 
 to open for the unfortunate leader. 
 
 But time. and reflection produced an effect which 
 argument and entreaty had been powerless to accom- 
 plish, and years afterwards, writing on the career 
 of that friend who' had then passed away, leaving 
 behind him a name to be for ever remembered, he 
 was able to say : — 
 
 I was not a rebel, as might be supposed from these ardent 
 remonstrances ; I was only vacillating and troubled. Whilst 
 obstinately resisting the pressing entreaties of Lacordaire, I 
 was doing my best to persuade M. de Lamennais that silence 
 and patience were his best course ; and, to obtain this result, 
 I could safely remind him of my faithful devotedness, as I 
 was then the last to stand by him. But I was irritated at 
 my younger and dearer friend for having taken a more public 
 and decisive course. I rashly reproached him with his ap- 
 parent forgetfulness of the liberal aspirations which had 
 animated us both. When at last I yielded, it was but slowly, 
 and not until I had made that generous heart bleed. 
 
 But Lamennais had a dearer friend and a truer 
 disciple in the Abbe Gerbet, who had watched over 
 him and nursed him in that terrible illness in 1827, 
 when it was believed that his last moments had 
 come, and who had stood by him through all the 
 
300 
 
 THE ABBE BE LAMENNAIS 
 
 labours -and misgivings which had accompanied the 
 foundation of the Mennaisian School. He, too, was 
 compelled for conscience sake to leave the master, 
 jbut he did so in silence, and there was from him no 
 i word of public refutation, or bitter recrimination, to 
 show the world that a rupture had taken place. 
 
 The Abbe Brute, too, the friend of his young 
 days, who had gone off to America about the time of 
 his ordination, and who had not seen him since, after 
 years of unrewarded missionary labour had at length 
 been raised to the episcopal dignity and had come to 
 France, where he had seen Lamennais. It appears 
 that with greater zeal than tact he set about the 
 conversion of his younger friend, and was not over 
 prudent in the selecting of occasions for bemoaning 
 his fall. On February 21, 1836, he wrote to him 
 from Florence a letter conceived in the old mystical 
 style which his correspondent knew so well. He 
 says amongst other things : — 
 
 I come from the holy altar — the victim was there — the 
 same who was on Calvary — whom you loved — who loves us 
 — Dilexii ME ! . . . Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, consub- 
 stantial, made man, your God and mine, loved us — loved 
 Feli Lamennais and this poor Brute, eighteen hundred years 
 ago, so much that he died for them. You loved Him once ! 
 ... Do you love Him still ? . . . Ah ! how you did love Him 
 in your ardent and tender soul ! What letters those were in 
 1809, 1810, up to 1815 and later !- 1 have them still. . . . 
 This sweet Saviour has not changed. He loves you. Who 
 am I that I should cease to love you ? that I should wish to 
 wound you ? No ; such is not my intention. . . . These 
 reproaches from your friend are but those of Jesus— those of 
 Mary— those of Feli's guardian angel. You still believe in 
 these, I hope. But how you forget and abandon them ! . . . 
 
A LIFE OF SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, '48 301 
 
 And he continues in his own quaint way, alluding 
 to the past, and reminding the ex-priest of those 
 happy days on which he has now turned his back for 
 ever. Under the circumstances it would have been 
 impossible to imagine anything more exasperating, 
 and the reply, if cruel, coming from the lips of an old 
 friend, was not altogether undeserved : — 
 
 Monseigneur [he began], I am accustomed to most 
 things, but I was, I confess, surprised at receiving a letter 
 from you, after what I have heard from Paris, from many 
 people, unknown to one another, about the zeal, as pious as 
 it is indefatigable, with which you have insinuated things 
 against me to those who have been so kind as to listen to 
 you. 
 
 I do not know what it has pleased you to say about me ; 
 but this I do know : — 
 
 You came to see me as a friend ; I received you as such. 
 . . . You found me then, so far as you were concerned, just 
 as you had known me twenty-five years ago. If, under the 
 circumstances, I had expounded to you, in unsuspecting con- 
 fidence, ideas, false in your opinion, perhaps wicked, any- 
 thing that I said should have been sacred. 
 
 But I did not do so, for, seeing from the first moment j 
 that you intended to take upon yourself the functions of a 
 juye d' instruction, I formally declared to you that I did not 
 wish to explain myself on matters the very thought of which i 
 was distasteful, to me. So that, whatever thoughts you may J 
 have attributed to me you owe to mere conjecture or to a 
 kind of divination which, when it transforms itself into ' 
 affirmation, becomes what I leave it to your conscience to 
 describe. 
 
 And the letter ends with a refusal to hold further 
 relations with a man who had shown himself in- 
 capable of conforming to the most ordinary rules of 
 human intercourse. 
 
302 
 
 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS- 
 
 But the saddest result of his change was his 
 r- quarrel with his brother. Responsible as he was for 
 innumerable institutions which owed their existence 
 to him, the Abbe Jean was especially at the mercy of 
 his ecclesiastical superiors. The publication of the 
 'Paroles' placed him in a position of considerable 
 embarrassment. Hitherto he had identified himself 
 in everything with the opinions of the author of the 
 'Essai surl'Indifference,' and it was but natural that 
 outsiders should suppose that this state of things was 
 now in no way altered. The Bishop of Rennes 
 demanded an explanation of him, and it was agreed 
 that he should write a letter repudiating the doctrines 
 of the ' Paroles,' which could be shown privately when- 
 , ever it was deemed necessary. Contrary to this 
 ! agreement the letter was published, causing consider- 
 ! able scandal. As soon as the circumstances became 
 known, Eeli admitted that weakness was the most 
 that could be laid to the charge of his brother, while 
 the bishop sought to atone for his fault by an apology. 
 But the harm had been done, and from this time the 
 two brothers continued to draw steadily apart from 
 one another. 
 
 It was not long before matters came to a crisis. 
 In the unusually morbid state of his imagination, 
 resulting from the catastrophe which had befallen 
 him, Feli de Lamennais set himself to examine the 
 events of his past life. Involuntarily he turned in 
 thought to those months of anxious self-examinings 
 which had preceded his ordination. Seen at so great 
 a distance, through the intervening stages of an 
 
A LIFE OF SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, '48 303 
 
 eventful career, the facts became clouded and dimmed, 
 and the conviction gradually took possession of him - 
 that his brother had been mainly responsible for what 
 now seemed to him a most fatal step. 
 
 What led to the final rupture it is not easy to say. 
 A tradition tells us that a quarrel arose over their 1 
 separate rights in La Chenaie and the books and 
 other things which it contained. In any case it is J 
 certain that towards the close of the spring of 183G, ' 
 Feli de Lamennais left his Breton home never to 
 return. The two brothers had met for the last time. 
 
 From this time we find him living in Paris, a prey ' 
 to the most abject misery. • He had lost all his money 
 in the failure or fraud of his publishers, and the pangs 
 of starvation and cold were added to the other mis- 
 fortunes which beset him. Indeed, nothing could be 
 more heart-rending than those last terrible pages of 
 his correspondence, from which no reader can turn 
 away with a dry eye and without an aching heart, 
 unless he be dead to every impulse of human feeling. 
 
 At one time he is saving up his food, at another 
 he cannot work, for he has to remain in bed to avoid 
 the necessity of a fire, which he cannot afford. 
 
 In one of his letters he tells us that he has been 
 looking for lodgings, combining cheapness with a 
 situation winch may remind him of that life in the 
 country which has now become impossible to him. He I 
 thought that he had found some, but the landlord was , 
 afraid of his name. 
 
 In the midst of all this it, is pleasant to find that 
 there were some of his friends who, in spite of con- 
 
304 THE A13DE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 siderable differences of opinion, did not desert him. 
 
 ■Mme. de Senfft and M. de Coriolis continued a 
 friendly correspondence with him during their lives. 
 The most touching of the letters which have come 
 down to us were written to an old St. Malo friend 
 of his, M. Marion. The Abbe Houet, who died only 
 a few years back, while holding the position of Supe- 
 rior of the Oratory of Rennes, never forgot the days 
 of his discipleship, and remained to the last a devoted 
 admirer, not to say worshipper, of his former master. 
 And there were many others, but amongst them all 
 none gave proof of a greater constancy or a truer 
 devotion than the Baron de Vitrolles. At no time 
 had he been in perfect agreement with Lamennais. 
 Even during the most reactionary moods of the 
 Ultramontane priest, the careful diplomatist had 
 looked on him as a fantastic unpractical dreamer, and 
 now there was no point of intellectual contact between 
 them. Yet even now the ties of personal friendship 
 were drawn closer, and it would be impossible to 
 imagine a more touching picture than is offered by 
 those weekly meetings in the baron's house, when 
 the two old men came together for an evening chat. 
 But now as always, Lamennais found his chief 
 
 \ consolation in his work. In 1830 he brought out his 
 ' Affaires de Rome,' which is considered by some to 
 be his masterpiece, and about which enough has been 
 said already to give an idea both of its style and of 
 its contents. He informed his readers that he wished 
 
 ; it to be accepted as the last act in the Catholic period 
 
 ; of his life. 
 
A LIFE OF SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, '48 303 
 
 He then began to look around him for a means of 
 adapting his ideal to the altered circumstances in 
 which he now stood, and it was not long before a 
 solution presented itself to him. 
 
 In his Catholic days he had found a considerable 
 portion of his doctrine .of life ready to hand. The 
 necessary weak points in any system of social re- 
 organisation which may have suggested itself to him, 
 had been naturally, and by an easy transition of 
 thought, filled in and strengthened by the religion ' 
 which he received in its entirety from the common I 
 consent of mankind ; now that he had rejected that 
 religion, it became' imperatively necessary to find 
 something to supply its place. It was probably, 
 while thinking on this that he came to a clear per- 
 ception of the principle of attraction, chemical affinity, 
 love, or society, working itself out in the world, which 
 he afterwards elaborated into the third person of his 
 philosophical Trinity. ' 
 
 Turning then to the human family as it existed 
 around him, he clearly saw that the problem lay con- 
 siderably deeper than had been anticipated by the 
 majority of the editors of the Aven-lr. It was not 
 merely political liberty, which had more than once 
 been turned to the profit of the few, but the people, 
 the material and spiritual wants of the toiling masses 
 of the world of labour, which had to be dealt with. 
 
 Now as always he saw that the God of the majority 
 of moderns was very different from the gods of the ' 
 ancients, or the God of the middle ages. The thought 
 suggested itself to him that what had once been a 
 
306 
 
 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 powerful principle had now been turned into an in- 
 tangible metaphysical abstraction, more pernicious 
 than otherwise whenever it was dragged forth from 
 the obscurity of the schools ; and that a venerable 
 formula, originally pregnant with social meaning, had 
 grown into a miserable parody of its former self — 
 the Word was made gold. and dwelt in Wall Street, 
 and we have seen his glory, as the glory of the almighty 
 dollar, full of power. 
 
 In the opinion of Lamennais the ' divine right ' 
 of the existing Government proceeded from this 
 source, though the relations between the celestial 
 powers and their protdgi were not always very 
 cordial. 
 
 In the need of the State [M. de Coriolis had written of 
 the government of Louis XIV.] some one thought of Samuel 
 Bernard. He was mentioned to the king, who was assured 
 that a wqrd from him would be sufficient to open Samuel's 
 endless purse. It was arranged that the rich merchant 
 should happen, as it were by chance, to be at Marly as the 
 king was passing by. ' Good-morning, Monsieur Bernard, I 
 am delighted to see you,' said the latter. Samuel was so 
 overcome that he said to Colbert : ' My whole fortune is at 
 .the service of his majesty.' 
 
 Lamennais answered on April 9, 183G : — 
 
 Your good Samuel Bernard was but a child, my dear 
 friend ; he would be hissed at the Bourse. Do you think 
 that if Louis Philippe were to say to M. liothschild : 
 ' Monsieur Rothschild, I am delighted to see you,' he in his 
 joy would cry out : ' My whole fortune is at the service of 
 Louis Philippe ' ? By Solomon and his father David, the 
 Jew would do nothing of the kind, and the Jew would be 
 right. It is true that Louis Philippe is not Louis XIV. 
 
A LIFE OF SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, *48 307 
 
 But if this worship of wealth was laughable from 
 one point of view, it was extremely serious in its 
 effect on society at large, and as we advance through 
 the pages of his published correspondence, it becomes v 
 painfully evident that such passages as this are very ' 
 rare, and that when they appear they are but a cloak 
 for a deep-rooted, gloomy pessimism which was slowly 
 gaining possession of him. 
 
 Even before he had left La Chenaie he spoke of 
 the approaching marriage between his niece, Augus- 
 tine Blaize, and his young disciple, Elie de Kertanguy, 
 in terms which, had they reached the young couple, 
 would have clouded their happiness with the thought 
 that they could not hope for sympathy from one who 
 was very dear to them both. ' I shall not be present,' 
 lie wrote to M. Marion ; ' such rejoicings are not for 
 me; they have always, I do not know why, filled 
 me with feelings of sadness.' Then nothing could 
 be more hopeless than his comment on a proposed j 
 European Congress, which he mentions in a letter of 
 August 19, 1836 : ' If it takes place, it will lead to the 
 result which always follows such assemblies, where j 
 the problem is this — to find a crime which all have!' 
 an equal interest in committing.' 
 
 Filled with fear and loathing, he turned from the 
 rulers to the people, and in the early weeks of the ' 
 year 1837 he undertook the editorship of a democratic 
 paper (the Monde), but a quarrel with the proprietor, 
 who does not seem to have allowed him sufficient 
 freedom, led to his resignation of this post after he 
 had held it for little more than four months. 
 
308 
 
 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 In the same year he published the Livre dit 
 Peuple, which may be considered as the first mani- 
 
 jfesto of his new opinions. It contains the earliest 
 
 { exposition of his mystical doctrine of society seen in 
 every fact of the universe. It is frankly democratic, 
 and if the author withholds his assent from anything 
 like systematic Socialism, he is none the less in 
 agreement with the Socialists in the objects which 
 he has in view. If the book is inferior in style to 
 ^ ne Affaires de Rome, and in warmth and brilliancy 
 of imagination to the Paroles, it is more scientific 
 in its methods than either of them, and may be 
 looked upon as the first manifestation of that pecu- 
 liar intellectual power which was afterwards revealed 
 in the Esquisse d'une Pliilosoplrie. 
 
 Lamennais now so far concentrated his energies 
 on that important work that the first three volumes 
 were published in about the same number of years. 
 But he was unable entirely to close his eyes to the 
 jcountless evidences of approaching revolution which 
 
 (were daily borne in upon him. 
 
 He no longer contented himself with predicting 
 an evil day for those in power. He had finally 
 
 ; identified himself with the democracy, and it had 
 become his duty to do his part in hastening the 
 catastrophe. And this alteration in his point of 
 view brought about a change in his estimate of the 
 
 ■ course of events. The ultimate downfall of the 
 existing regime no longer seemed so near as when 
 he had looked forward to it with a less certain hope- 
 
 : fulness. Consequently his letters assume to the 
 
A LIFE OF SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, '48 309 
 
 superficial reader an appearance of moderation which 
 is altogether absent from those which were written 
 in his Catholic days. All his energy is reserved for 
 his public writings, his articles, and his pamphlets/f 
 written with a view to goading the authorities into ! 
 acts of unconstitutional violence, and to preparing I 
 the people for the work which lay before them. 
 
 Thus it was that in October 1840 he published 
 a violent denunciation of the Government, under the 
 title ' Le Pays et le Gouvernement,' in which he ' 
 compared the constitution of France to an Oriental 
 despotism, a form of political organisation which 
 could in no sense be dignified with the name of 
 society. And he called on his fellow-countrymen to 
 reject a yoke which was utterly degrading to human 
 nature. 
 
 To the self-complacent courtiers of Louis Philippe 
 this pamphlet seemed like an open incitement to 
 armed sedition. A prosecution was resolved on, and ^ 
 Lainennais was summoned to appear before the 
 representatives of the law. He did so, but not before 
 he had received a striking testimony from a quarter 
 whence his past career gave him little reason to 
 expect it. It came in the form of abetter from 
 Joseph Maz/Jni. Speaking in the name of the^- 
 Italian workmen living in London who were members 
 of the society of ' Young Italy,' the writer says : — 
 
 They honour you for the genius God has given you ; they 
 love you for the use you have made of it. 
 
 They know that during your whole career, even when 
 you have seemed most hopelessly separated from the 
 
310 
 
 TIIR ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 apostles of the democracy, you have had but one inspira- 
 tion—the love of the people ; and one object— their moral, 
 intellectual, and material good. In looking for the protectors 
 and educators of the people you have knocked at every 
 door. . . . Kings, popes, clergy, aristocracy all have failed 
 
 „you, anathematised you, deceived you. 
 
 You felt that God, who is at once intelligence and love, 
 was not there . . . that you must penetrate the depths of 
 society, to the bosom of that people which gave birth to 
 Christ, and for which He died ; and you came into our 
 midst. . . . God and the people will not betray you . . . 
 you will understand the religious meaning of the thought 
 which is expressed on the envelope containing this letter : 
 
 -God and Humanity. One Master in Heaven, one inter- 
 preter of His law on the earth, such is the faith of those 
 who now write to you. . . . May your powerful, your ardent 
 pen be employed as a help to them, as their affection will 
 follow you to the tomb. 
 
 Lamennais answered on December 8. After 
 expressing his faith in the final triumph of God and 
 Humanity, he says : — 
 
 I have seen Italy, and I could not see her without loving 
 her, without believing that a great future was reserved to 
 her. . . . May she prepare herself by a thorough and active 
 self-education ; may the thought of perfect unity free her 
 from her fetters, and especially those which bind the soul, 
 that they may the more easily subdue the body, local pre- 
 judices, and fatal national jealousies : are you not all 
 brothers? May she arouse herself from the torpor of 
 inertia ; . . . mistress of herself, invincible, she will cease 
 ... to seek salvation from without ; her salvation will 
 be in her faith, in the firm resolution of each one of her 
 children to die, if necessary, for her. All honour to the 
 confessors, to the martyrs. 
 
 Perhaps, gentlemen, it will not be granted to me to see 
 
A LIFE OF SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, '48 311 
 
 any of you in this life, which passes as a shadow ; but there 
 is another where we shall meet. 
 
 Fortified by such expressions of a common 
 sympathy, Lamennais prepared to face his judges. 
 He was ably defended, and his influence in the 
 country was immense.- But the Government was/ 
 determined to get him condemned, and he was un-i 
 doubtedly guilty from a technical point of view. ! 
 Such passages, for instance, as the following were 
 quite sufficient to lead to a decision against him : — 
 
 Reform ! Reform ! such is the cry which should resound 
 from one end of the country to the other, from Brest to 
 Strasbourg, from Bayonne to Dunkerque. 
 
 Reform, a complete reform will free us from the ego- 
 istical race of cowards and of traitors, of money-grabbers 
 who see in the people their legitimate prey. 
 
 France cannot perish, she is necessary to the world. If 
 then — I say it to the timid — if you will not accept a peaceful 
 reform, you shall have a violent one. Choose ! 
 
 It was in vain that the newspapers ridiculed the 
 idea of condemning for a breach of the laws against 
 the press one of the foremost writers of the day. In 
 vain did the counsel for the defence enlarge on the 
 renown of the accused and the scandal which would 
 result from an adverse decision. The very greatness 
 of their opponent made it impossible for the Govern- \ 
 ment to recede, and in spite of a short speech from 
 Lamennais, in which he disclaimed any intention of 
 instigating the people to violence, the Court con- 1 
 demned him to a fine of 2,000 francs and one year's 
 imprisonment. 
 
 Fortunately he had just published the first three 
 
312 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 volumes of the Esquisse, and his new misfortune and 
 the bitterness resulting from it found no expression 
 in the pages of that work. 
 
 On December 30 he wrote to Marion :— 
 
 Just a word, my dear friend, before I go to take posses- 
 sion of the rooms which have been got ready for me at 
 Sainte-Pelagie. I think I shall go there the day after 
 to-moiTow, the sooner I go in the sooner I shall come out 
 again. Besides, my imagination is in no way frightened by 
 the prospect of a. change in my life. It is pleasant to be 
 where duty has led us, and my condemnation will be more 
 ; useful to the holy cause . . . than my acquittal would have 
 been. . . . 
 
 A fortnight later he describes his new quarters : — 
 
 My room is large enough, for I can walk nine paces 
 from corner to corner. The height of the small windows 
 from the ground and the bars on them make the place 
 agreeably like a cellar. However, a few rays of sun get 
 through, even at this time of year. My apartment faces 
 two ways, to the west and to the south, and, as I am 
 perched up under the roof, if I stand on a chair I get a 
 pretty good view. From the brick floor, if I hold myself 
 straight, I can touch the ceiling, not only with my hand 
 but with my wrist. A small stove which I have had put 
 in gives me some warmth. There is a little yard where I 
 might walk with the others at certain times, but I do not 
 ^go there, and shall never do so. I prefer to remain in my 
 dungeon for more than one reason. It is comparatively 
 easy to get permission to see me. My nephew, who is 
 touching in his devotion to me, comes every day. As to 
 letters, those which are addressed through the post are first 
 
 ! brought to be read by the police. So I have made a de- 
 claration that, not wishing to have a hand in so infamous 
 a proceeding, I shall receive none, no matter whence they 
 
 1 come. At nine in the morning I make my coffee ; four 
 
A LIFE OF SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, '48 313 
 
 hours afterwards I eat a little bread and butter ; at six they 
 send me from a neighbouring restaurant two dishes for my 
 dinner. The day goes on without my being bored, for one 
 cannot be bored when one has books. But shall I be able 
 to work ? I cannot say yet ; though I foresee that it will 
 be difficult. I was forgetting one little ceremony. My 
 door is held from within by a wooden latch, outside is a 
 huge bolt . . . awarder draws this every evening. What 
 1 miss most is sleep. Perhaps that will come later. To 
 sum up, I do not for a moment regret my position. I am ; 
 where I ought to be ... on account of the cause to which ', 
 1 have devoted my life. 
 
 The almost unbroken silence of this dreary 
 solitude was often .fgreeably relieved by expressions 
 of sympathy, both from personal friends and from 
 different sections of that people for whom he offered 
 up his sufferings to God. The luckless prisoner 
 found too that he could sometimes work, and thus 
 many a weary hour was usefully employed. But 
 bad air and want of exercise gradually told on his 
 health and spirits, and, after the first few months, 
 a deep gloom seems to have settled down on him, A 
 filling his soul with bitterness. This accounts for 
 that beautifully pathetic lamentation which runs 
 through the last pages of his political allegory, the/ 
 Amschaspands et Darvavds. They were written in 
 his cell at Sainte-Pelagie, and have since been pub- 
 lished separately as Une Voix de Prison. One 
 passage in particular gives evidence of the state 
 of his mind at this time : — 
 
 It was an autumn evening : a warm breeze was blowing 
 from the west, a gentle breath from the sleeping seas. The 
 
314 
 
 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 sun was suspended over the horizon in an ocean of trans- 
 parent vapour. Dark blue clouds, ethereal flowers, spread 
 around their borders corollas of a thousand forms, tinged 
 with colours without number, whose mingling shades imper- 
 ceptibly transformed themselves and were lost in a stream 
 of gold. The seagull skimmed with its wing the smooth 
 surface of the water, while over the sandy shore the 
 martin sent forth its plaintive cry, and the only other sound 
 was in the gentle murmur of the waves expiring at the foot 
 of the rock. Overhead a black mass, a prison, threw around 
 a gigantic shadow. 
 
 And little by little the air became as troubled water, 
 and the twilight spread its veil of ever-deepening darkness 
 over the cliff. 
 
 A voice went forth from the bosom of the waters, and 
 rose up vague, immense, as the sighing of the spirit of the 
 depths ; and, from the summit of the solitary rock, another 
 voice, mingling with that one, went out into the night and 
 died away on the deserted shore. 
 
 And it said : — 
 
 They -have bound the body, but the soul laughs at them, 
 it is free ! 
 
 Because I loved thee, oh my country ! because I wished 
 thee great, happy, those who betrayed thee have thrown me 
 into this prison. 
 
 They have bound the body, but the soul laughs at them, 
 it is free ! 
 
 It is free, and it laughs at them, vile slaves of their own 
 baseness, infamous serfs of fear, eternally buried in their 
 cowardice, and walled up in their crimes. 
 
 Can their bolts shut in my thought, my love? Can 
 they withhold me from your midst, brothers ; and is not your 
 life mine ? 
 
 When you suffer, I suffer with you ; when you struggle, 
 I struggle with you ; there is, as it were, an invisible breath 
 which passes from you to me, and from me to you. They 
 may seize it if they can ! 
 
A LIFE OF SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, M8 315 
 
 They have bound the body, but the soul laughs at them, 
 it is free ! 
 
 The voice was silent for a while, then it continued : — 
 
 Without, everything is silent, all things are at rest ! In 
 the midst of this silence something strikes the attentive ear ; 
 is it a sound or the dream of a sound '? 
 
 Whilst earth, and air, and water in their sleep are 
 peopled with dreams, whilst life is germinating in the bosom 
 of sleep . . . old memories are awakened and lead me back 
 to times which were and which will never be again. 
 
 How beautiful the sun was, how nature smiled on me ! 
 How keen, how gentle, how pure was the joy of the child 
 lingering by the hedge of dog roses and of sweet-brier, 
 listening to the soft murmur of the rustling leaves, watching 
 the swaying of the young branches, or wandering in May in 
 the thick underwood, torn by the brambles, or pursuing with 
 outstretched hand, trembling and breathless, the insect with 
 a long body and transparent wings among the rushes by the 
 pond. 
 
 No regret for the past, no care for the future. Limpid 
 horizons sometimes sprinkled with light clouds, which were 
 soon blown away by the gentle winds. 
 
 My sister, do you remember our morning rambles over 
 the dewy grass, our games in the woods, the nests which, 
 with tears in your eyes, you forbade me to touch because of 
 the poor mother ? 
 
 Then days and yeprs went by, and, thrown in upon 
 itself, moved by unknown joys and sorrows, my soul spread 
 out its mysterious wings over a new life about to be born. 
 
 And after the enchanting dreams, the ardours, the affec- 
 tions, the passions of my young days, came the severe duties 
 of manhood, the great, the holy fight, in which to fall is to 
 conquer, in which to die is to be born into life. 
 
 They are fallen and they have conquered, those whom I 
 saw struck by the bullet or felled to the earth by the sword 
 of the coward. 
 
 They, again, are fallen and they have conquered, who, 
 
3* 6 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 dying in long agony on prison straw, feebly murmured the 
 name of their country. 
 
 Glorious band of brave men, you are near me, and I hear 
 you say : ' Brother, listen ! the martyrs are calling us from on 
 high ! ' Crowned in splendour, divine messengers, they go 
 from sphere to sphere, singing the song of the future. 
 
 A virtue gees out from them, it penetrates the hearts of 
 the people, they beat faster, the earth and the heavens 
 tremble, and the worlds, palpitating in the bosom of im- 
 mensity, say one to another : ' A great act of justice is about 
 to be done ; did you not feel the breath of God ? ' 
 
 Once more the voice was silent as if lost in the immen- 
 sity of space. Then, all at once, vibrating with renewed 
 force : — 
 
 ' They have bound the body but the soul laughs at them, 
 it is free ! ' 
 
 When Lamennais left his prison at the end of 
 1841 he was utterly broken down in health, but he 
 was buoyed up by the hope that he would have some- 
 thing to do with the approaching overthrow of the 
 existing regime. After a short visit to his friend 
 Marion, in Brittany, he settled down sadly to his work. 
 On March 7, 1842, he wrote to his host : — 
 
 I was not so tired after the return journey as I was after 
 getting down to your place. I am not yet quite myself, but 
 I am better. I am slowly getting accustomed to my new 
 rooms, which are comfortable and which suit me. ... I was 
 so happy with you, my dear friend, that I am filled with 
 sadness at the thought that it will not be easy to renew such 
 visits. It is sad to be so far apart, to be so old, to find 
 travelling so difficult. Why am I not twenty years younger ? 
 Then the journey would be nothing. But We should take 
 life as it is. We do not do so, and it defeats us after a certain 
 time. But I do not complain. Why should one wish to 
 strike deeper root in the mud on which we vegetate ? 
 
A LIFE OF SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, '48 317 
 
 But if this life in Paris was hopeless in the 
 isolation and misery to which it condemned the 
 unfortunate ex-priest, it none the less gave rise from 
 time to time to amusing episodes. One of these took 
 place about two years before the imprisonment at 
 Sainte-Pelagie. 
 
 Providence [he wrote] condemns me to live alone, and 
 more than ever now that I have got rooms at one of the 
 extremities of Paris, about three-quarters of a league from 
 the centre. Over my head I have a fat English woman, 
 with whom I am' at open war. In spite of the messages I 
 have sent her by the porter, she persists in waking me at 
 about ten or eleven o'clock by the noise she makes, and I 
 cannot sleep the rest of the night. Seeing which, one hour 
 after she has got into bed, 1 get up and pay her back in full. 
 The woman is furious, and so far I cannot say how the 
 matter will end. One thing is certain, I shall not yield. 
 
 Soon afterwards we learn that the lady is not 
 English, but French, and that he is looking for rooms 
 elsewhere. 
 
 It is true that his isolation was not absolute, that 
 in leaving his old friends he had opened the way for 
 an acquaintance with many who were held in high 
 honour in various paths of life, and that his repu- 
 tation and his destiny been me interwoven with such 
 nam es as those of George Sand, Beranger, Arago, 
 
 O'Connell, Mazzini, etc., but there is no evidence in 
 the case of any of these that intellectual sympathy 
 ever ripened into a wanner feeling, or that he found 
 in his new surroundings any response to the natural 
 longings of his affectionate nature. In his letters to 
 Marion he constantly speaks of his loneliness, and, 
 
318 THE ABBE 1)E LAMEXNAIS 
 
 with the exception of the Baron de Vitrolles, it is 
 hard to find anyone among his Parisian acquaintance 
 who, in the true sense of the word, could be called 
 his friend. ' As for me,' he says on one occasion, 
 * I have no one to love me : I am alone ; so I watch 
 the time go by, as the traveller, seated on a bare rock 
 by the side of a river, waits till it is low enough that he 
 may cross over and come to his evening resting-place.' 
 Then nothing could be more hopelessly pes- 
 simistic than many of the thoughts in his ' Dis- 
 cussions critiques et Pensees diverses,' concluded in 
 prison. I select a few of them : — 
 
 Lie there, my people, and bleat for joy, for you have a 
 master who loves you, a father rather than a pastor. Oh, 
 dear people ! return love for love ; give me your wool, for I 
 am cold ; your blood, for I am thirsty ; your flesh, for I am 
 hungry. 
 
 Oh, God ! they have turned Thy temple into a sepulchre 
 where the priest crawls and disputes their impure food with 
 the worms. 
 
 They say that there have been cannibals in the world. 
 I do not deny it, but it cannot have been for long ; they 
 must have died of poisoning. 
 
 What is it that they call the lustre of old families ? It 
 is the shining track which snails leave behind them as they 
 
 crawl. 
 
 Some one was asked what number France contained of 
 ministers, general directors, prefets, sous-prefets, in a word, 
 of Government officials. He answered : ' When I meet a 
 corpse on the road I do not amuse myself by counting the 
 worms which are moving in it ! ' 
 
 If misfortune weighs upon you, fly to the desert. The 
 tears of man are received only in the bosom of his mother, 
 Nature, or of his father, God. 
 
A LIFE OF SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, '48 319 
 
 Could anything be more terrible than this ? Could 
 any more striking expression be found for the most 
 utter misery and despair. It is not surprising that 
 reports of the state of his mind should have reached 
 his Breton home, and that vague, uncertain rumours 
 should have got to the ears of the Abbe Jean, who 
 had been trying to drown his grief in the performance 
 of the duties of his office, and of that labour of love 
 to which he had devoted his life. The two brothers 
 had not spoken since that fatal day in 1836, when 
 they had turned their backs on one another for ever, 
 and even now he did not dare to disturb the sullen 
 solitude of Feli, but he wrote to the elder Blaize on' 
 July 8, 1842 :— 
 
 I beg of you to ask Ange to tell Feli from me that I 
 make over to him the full, entire, and ahsolute right to 
 La Chenaie without the smallest reserve ; he may dispose 
 of it as he will, and as if I were no longer in the world ! 
 The only thing to which I will not consent is that I should 
 receive a centime in payment for it. . . . Poor Feli, how 
 happy I should be if I knew that he was near, even though 
 I should be condemned never to tell him, face to face, how | 
 I have always loved him, and how I love him still. 
 
 The answer, which was sent through Marion, was 
 indeed cruel. The offer was refused, and the writer' 
 added : — 
 
 I know how difficult it is to get the individual in question 
 to terminate a business which he thinks he has an interest 
 in prolonging. 
 
 It is true that his hands are full with other things ; he 
 is travelling in Lower Brittany. Perhaps he is gone on a 
 pilgrimage to Saint Yves. 
 
320 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 To realise the deep pathos of the situation, it is 
 not necessary to blame an act which may have been 
 justified by the circumstances. 
 
 Turning from his private to his public life, the 
 outlook at this period is hardly more hopeful. 
 
 ' To whom can we turn to-day ? ' he says in one 
 letter. ' What can we stir up but filth, and that of 
 the foulest?' He still believed that the existing 
 rdgime was doomed, but he seems to have come to 
 the conclusion that the final crash might be indefi- 
 nitely postponed in the prevailing corruption. .This it 
 is which gives a theoretical colouring to his two well- 
 j known political pamphlets, Die Passe et de VAoeuir 
 ' du Pevple, and De I'Esclavage moderne, and it was 
 this which made him concentrate his energies on the 
 completing of the fourth volume of the Esquisse, 
 which appeared in 184G, and on his beautiful trans- 
 lation of the Gospels which preceded it at no very 
 great distance, and in which the founder of Chris- 
 tianity is represented as the type of the persecuted 
 people. 
 
 Hence the interest with which we read what 
 remains of his correspondence with various friends 
 of his among the working classes, most of which, and 
 *• especially the letters to his tailor, M. Dessoliaire, are 
 directed to the promoting of a belief in the future. 
 One of these, selected at random from Blaize, will 
 serve to give an idea of the rest. It is dated Sep- 
 tember 28, 1840 :— 
 
 Many thanks, my dear M. Dessoliaire, for having 
 thought of ray winter clothing, but I shall not want any- 
 
A LIFE OF SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, '48 321 
 
 thing this year ; I have two waistcoats and two pairs of 
 trousers, one of them old and the other new, and that will 
 be enough. As to the overcoat, I have that too ; it is true 
 it was not made for me, but it will do well enough when it 
 has been shortened a little and taken in. I have also had a 
 present made me of a dressing-gown. 
 
 My health is not good-; I suffer nearly every night from 
 fever. Great family misfortunes have come upon me. One 
 of my nieces, after having lost one of her children, has lost 
 her husband. 1 . . . He has died .... leaving behind him 
 five poor little orphans. Providence will watch over them 
 as it will watch, over you, whatever persecutions may be 
 directed against you. The power of the wicked has its ' 
 limits, which God does not allow it to transgress. Walk in i 
 uprightness, in justice, and in love, pitying those whose 
 errors or evil passions turn them from the path, for they arc 
 truly to be pitied ; and in the remorse and suffering which 
 hatred engenders in them, they begin here below to reap the 
 fruit of their works. Without in any way abandoning the 
 truth and its holy cause, keep yourself from a too ardent 
 zeal, which would raise up enemies against you without 
 profit to those whom it is your mission to instruct. Jesus 
 Christ told His disciples to combine the wisdom of the 
 serpent with the simplicity of the dove. The man who 
 moves too quickly falls; he who walks reaches the goal. . . . 
 
 Tell your friends that I remember them, and that from 
 the bottom of my heart I pray to the Heavenly Father for 
 His blessing on them. — Yours very affectionately . . . 
 
 And again : ' This year will be a hard one for 
 the poor. How much less evil would result from it 
 if each man acted as he ought ! Let us work to- 
 gether to hasten the time when these things will be.' 
 
 Lamennais never recovered from the physical 
 
 1 Elie ile Kertanguy. 
 
322 
 
 THE ABBE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 weakness brought on by age and by his year of prison 
 life. ' For the last six weeks,' he wrote to Marion in 
 March 1845, ' I have suffered much from my head 
 and my stomach. About a week ago this resulted in 
 a long syncope. Fortunately, this accident, which, as 
 you know, is no new thing with me, has led to nothing 
 serious, but I have to be careful.' And in June: 'I 
 am still suffering, not only in my leg, but in my side 
 from the hip. It is very inconvenient, and I see no 
 hope of getting cured, so I am letting things go as 
 they may. . . . The disease and its treatment would 
 make two evils : I am content with one.' Again, in 
 October : ' Whilst you were on the wing, I was in 
 bed with a fever ; I simply waited without seeing a 
 doctor or taking any medicine, and, in the end, the 
 fever went away of itself.' And on April 27, 184G : 
 ' My health is of the worst; I have hardly any strength 
 left, and I never sleep. After excessive fatigue in 
 more than one direction, rest is absolutely necessary 
 to me, but I cannot get it. The old horse must trot, 
 trot, till he falls by the roadside.' 
 
 It would be difficult to imagine anything sadder 
 than the spectacle of this old man, after a life at once 
 more active and more violent in its contrasts than 
 falls to the lot of ordinary mortals, compelled in his 
 declining years ever to go forward on a seemingly 
 endless journey. What was the cause of this terrible 
 infliction of a ruthless destiny ? Was it the result, of 
 a diseased imagination, of the tyranny of an idea ? 
 Must its victim be looked upon as a fugitive from the 
 insatiable hunger of a maddened conscience ? 
 
A LIFE OF SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, '48 323 
 
 You remember [he wrote a fortnight later to Marion], 
 you remember the invalid of whom I spoke to you two 
 months ago, when I spent three weeks by his bedside, and 
 got so tired that I had no strength left. Having been sent 
 for by him in a fresh crisis, I have now been with him for 
 eight days, during which time I have not left him for a 
 moment, and I am writing"this in his room. So you see it 
 is not my literary labours which are killing me. On the 
 contniry, I foresee that I shall lose the summer on which I 
 had counted for getting on with the Esquisse. It would 
 take too long if I were to attempt to describe all the em- 
 barrassments and. cares of every kind, resulting from my 
 functions as garde-mahtcle to a man who is touchy, fantastic 
 to a degree, and whose distressing whims often border on 
 insanity. But I have' taken the thing up, so I must go 
 through with it, and I shall do so if my strength permits. 
 
 I should like to continue this chat with you . . . but 
 the sick man will not leave me a quarter of an hour's 
 peace. . . . 
 
 So days, and weeks, and months went by, and the 
 old man gave no sign that he suspected the near 
 approach of a revolution which was to shake to their 
 foundations the constitutions of all the leading 
 countries of Europe. Up to the last moment he 
 seems to have contented himself with sowing the 
 seeds of moderation and fraternity among his working "' 
 friends, without apparently any hope of himself being 
 alive to witness the results. So late as June 31, 1847, y 
 he wrote to Dessoliaire : — 
 
 I am very much touched by the affectionate things you 
 write to me, both in your own name and in that of your 
 friends, on the occasion of my birthday. Will you thank in 
 particular Hivern and Camus, who have been so good as 
 personally to send messages to me in your letter. The true 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 THE ABnE DE LAMENNAIS 
 
 bond of union with souls, and the foundation of all hope in 
 the future, is that holy love which, coming from God and 
 returning to Him, makes of men so many brothers, and 
 destroys, with egoism, the principle of evil on the earth. 
 Such is the true law which the good should first put into 
 practice, and then defend against the wicked, whose kingdom 
 should not be allowed to prevail against that of God. The 
 time will come when it will be necessary to fight ; let each 
 one prepare himself beforehand. 
 
 A. few months later we find him in the midst of 
 the determined agitation for reform which marked 
 the la,st months of the year 1847. 
 
 The history of the Eevolution of 1848 has already 
 been written, in as far as it can be written, at the 
 comparatively short distance of time which as yet 
 separates us from it. The situation at the close of 
 the reign of Louis Philippe has been well summed 
 up by Lamartine : — 
 
 The people is not scientific in its methods, but it has a 
 vague political sense. It had quickly perceived that the 
 nation was being sacrificed to the interests . . . of the dynasty, 
 in our relations with foreign powers ; that Louis Philippe 
 made peace humiliating ; that his alliance at any price with 
 London sometimes made him appear in Europe as the 
 viceroy of England on the continent ; that the treaties of 
 1815, a natural but momentary reaction from the unjust 
 conquests of the Empire, were becoming, with his dynasty, 
 the recognised state of things with regard to France's posi- 
 tion in Europe. . . . An opinion, uttered or unexpressed, of 
 Jthe masses accused the reign of Louis Philippe of having 
 betrayed the Eevolution in the country itself, by adopting, 
 ■one by one, the traditions of monarchy by divine right, 
 instead of conforming to the democratic principle which 
 had created the elective monarchy of 1830. 
 
A LIFE OF SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, '48 325 
 
 ' A parliamentary oligarchy seemed to be the ideal of 
 this prince, formed in the political atmosphere of Great" 
 Britain. That oligarchy was itself swamped in the mechan- 
 ism of government. A Chamber of Peers . . . deprived of \ 
 its independence by the absence of the hereditary principle, I 
 was but the mockery of a senate,' at the mercy of the king. [ 
 ' A Chamber of Deputies crammed with public officials, &c.' 
 
 Such was the state of things which, when crowned 
 by an unpopular diplomatico-matrimonial move on n 
 the part of the family of Orleans, produced the 
 Revolution of IB48. 
 
 The movement began by a series of political " 
 banquets, organised as an occasion for protesting 
 against existing abuses. There is a letter in the 
 collection published by Blaize, dated November 18, 
 1847, in which Lamennais declines to be present at 
 one of these meetings, on account of his health, and 
 he adds : — 
 
 Let them know, in any case, that at heart I shall be 
 with them ; that with them I shall protest with my whole 
 soul against the corruption, the meanness, the hypocrisy of 
 a system, retrograde to the extent of wishing to establish 
 despotism . . . that with them I shall demand that in( 
 accordance with justice and reason . . . the question should 
 be seriously gone into, how it is possible, in the distribution 
 of the fruits of labour, to do away with the revolting anom- 
 alies which crush under their weight the most numerous 
 portion of the human family. 
 
 After a rapid succession of events, including the 
 attempted suppression of the banquets, the invasion 
 of the Chamber by the people of Paris, the abdication 
 of the king, and the formation of a provisional govern- 
 
326 
 
 THE ABBE DE LAMENNA1S 
 
 ment by Lamartine and his friends, the Republic was 
 proclaimed from the Hdtel de Ville on February 24, 
 1848. 
 
 In the excitement which followed, during which 
 the inmates of the Hotel de Ville were compelled to 
 withstand the repeated assaults of an angry and un- 
 reasoning populace, the fate of the young Republic 
 was for some time held in the balance. The struggle 
 has been graphically described by Lamartine, and it 
 is needless here to go over the ground which has 
 already been covered by him. But there is one fact 
 in his work which calls for notice here ; he speaks of 
 Lamennais as of a man on whom he had relied to 
 moderate the violence of the extreme parties in Paris, 
 and he tells us that he was disappointed in him, 
 and that he found him a ruthless demagogue, one 
 of those who contributed most to the failure of the 
 Eepublic. 
 
 From the letters I have quoted we should hardly 
 have expected this, and perhaps the opinion is a little 
 exaggerated. But it is undoubted that the famous 
 writer was dragged into the vortex of the storm which 
 then raged over France, carrying all before it. 
 
 When the machinery for the approaching elections 
 to a constituent assembly had been set in motion, he 
 ^became editor of an uncompromising Republican paper, 
 the Peuple Constituant ; but still his attitude seems 
 to have been all that could be desired from the point 
 of view of the party of order. On March 17, 1848, 
 he wrote to Dessoliaire : — 
 
A LIFE OF SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, '48 327 
 
 I snatch a moment at the beginning of a fourteen hours 
 day to write you this note. Go on getting ready for the 
 approaching elections. Send us convinced and honest ( 
 Kepublicans, friends of order and of liberty. The Com- [ 
 munist sects have done much harm among the workmen, j 
 They are beset by extravagant dreams, and they loiter in 
 the streets instead of going to work. But, God be praised, 
 reasonable people are in a majority. 
 
 Perhaps we may see in a letter of May 6 an in- 
 dication of the kind of thing which led to the adverse 
 judgment of Lamartine : — 
 
 I have noj a moment to myself, and I am utterly tired 
 out. The justice of ,God is, come ; a better future opens \ 
 before us. . . . Get ready for the elections, every one is going 1 
 to vote ; may there be a general agreement to elect only 
 right-minded men, men of honour and probity, sincerely 
 attached to the Eepublic, which alone can save us. Other 
 things will follow if we make sure of that. Beware of 
 cunning, of intriguers of every kind ; of all those who have \ 
 had anything to do with public affairs, there is hardly one of 
 them who is not more or less corrupted. 
 
 The last clause may have been personally dis- 
 agreeable to more than one member of the provisional 
 government, but that it meant nothing more terrible ' 
 may be seen in his next letter to the same group of 
 political friends : — 
 
 The Communists and the Terrorists have done us a great I 
 deal of harm ; they have been, and still are, the truest sup- J 
 porters of the factions, through the fear they inspire, and 
 the disorder into which they have thrown the workmen, who 
 have-determined to remain idle. 
 
 But there was one friend who was sincerely 
 troubled at the doings of Feli de Lamennais. The 
 
328 
 
 THE ABBE DE LAMENXAIS 
 
 ' Baron de Vitrolles had remained true to him through 
 all the vicissitudes of Lis life, and the greatest differ- 
 ences of opinion had never raised a barrier between 
 them. The excitement of the political agitation had 
 now put a stop to their intercourse, and the old 
 diplomatist seems to have been horrified at the 
 rumours which reached him. On May 11 he 
 wrote : — 
 
 Judging by myself, my dear friend, I have a firm belief 
 in your wishing that we could meet, at least for a few 
 minutes ; and, in spite of your occupations, I cannot under- 
 stand that it should bs absolutely impossible, for I can think 
 of many who have even more to do — as it has been with me 
 at certain periods of my life — who know how to find quarters 
 of an hour for friendship. 
 
 M. Scheffer has discouraged me from going to look for 
 you in the offices of your paper. He says that he was badly 
 received, and that he was evidently a cause of embarrassment 
 to you. "Writing to you would not quite satisfy me, and then 
 I am not good at it. I see by your answers that you do not 
 understand me, or that you have not time to read my letters. 
 In this perplexity, and that I may have some one who can 
 speak to me of you, and to whom I can speak, would it be 
 indiscreet to ask if I could see your nephew '? If I knew his 
 address I should have gone to look him up, or asked him 
 to come round for a moment to me. 
 
 You see I am determined, my dear friend, and they 
 will never get me to believe that yon are not as anxious as 
 I am. 
 
 Lamennais answered next day : — 
 
 I have been suffering all night from fever. It is now 
 six o'clock ; they have just brought me your letter with 
 several others. This is my life : on jumping out of bed the 
 most important letters of the preceding evening to answer. 
 
A LIFE OF SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, '48 329 
 
 Article to write. At twelve, room. On coming back dozens 
 of letters to open, read, &c. Next day's issue of the paper to 
 look over, articles to correct, &c. My dinner of a quarter of 
 an hour never goes by without interruption. I have then 
 to myself only Sunday afternoons ; I put off till then all my 
 interviews, which are subject, as you may imagine, to con- 
 siderable accumulation. " It is on that day, from one to five, 
 that we might meet ; come then, for you may be sure I 
 desire it as much as you. There is not a word of truth in 
 what Ary Scheffer told you. He is an excellent man, but 
 very sensitive. I have not time for more. Ever yours, &c. 
 
 When the constituent assembly came together 
 after the elections, the supporters of Lamartine were! 
 in a majority, and Lamennais, who took up his posi-i 
 tion on the Extreme Left, found himself seated on the \ 
 same benches with Lacordaire, who wore the habit of 
 the Dominican order. He was not a success in the I 
 chamber, for he was entirely wanting in the gifts of ' 
 oratory, but he was elected a member of the com- 
 mittee appointed to draw up the constitution. Yet,' 
 even here, success did not await him, for his natur- 
 ally dogmatic temperament had become exaggerated, 
 by age and misfortune, and he found it impossible' 
 to compromise matters with his more practical col- 
 leagues. 
 
 Meanwhile the ultra moderate tendencies of the 
 assembly, which bordered on reaction, led to con- 
 siderable ill-feeling among the people of Paris. The 
 unemployed, of whom Lamennais spoke in writing to 
 Dessoliaire, became a formidable source of danger to 
 the assembly. Already in May an organised out- 
 break had been with difficulty suppressed by the 
 
330 THE ABBE DE LAMENXA1S 
 
 energy of Lamartine and his friends, and towards 
 the end of June the streets of the capital were once 
 more handed over to the mercies of an insurrec- 
 tionary mob. The struggle began on the 23rd; it 
 raged for three days in spite of the military opera- 
 tions carried on against the insurgents under the 
 dictatorship of General Cavaignac, and it was only at 
 the end of that time that the last of the barricades 
 were finally carried, through the combined <■ et of a 
 bombardment of mortars, which set fire to the sur- 
 rounding houses, the pushing of a mine under the 
 ground occupied by the revolutionists, and a flank 
 attack on their position by General Lamoriciere. 
 
 As the immediate result of the suppression of this 
 movement, a powerful reaction set in in the assembly, 
 which now adopted measures with which men like 
 Lamennais could not possibly agree. Even before the 
 outbreak, the editor of the Peuple Co<!.stitua?it had 
 begun to differ from his colleagues in the Chamber : — 
 
 Things are looking very bad here [he had written to Des- 
 soliaire on June 9]. . . . The Government is powerless or 
 worse. It has just got a law passed on gatherings in the 
 streets, placards, seditious cries, &c, which is more revolting 
 /than anything imagined by Louis Philippe. Something 
 serious will happen. 
 
 And now that something had happened ; the 
 
 Government was victorious, and those who, like 
 
 _ Lamennais, had shown sympathy for the people, were 
 
 compelled to suffer. On June 28 he wrote to his 
 
 nephew Blaize : — 
 
 I shall not speak of the sad events of the last few days 
 now that the battle is over, the battle but not the war ; the 
 
A LIFE OP SUFFERING AND DEVOTION, '48 331 
 
 factions, who for two months have been moving heaven and 
 earth to get it to take place, have reaped the benefit, inaugu- 
 rating their advent to power by prescriptive laws, based, 
 they say, in imitation of '93, on general security and public 
 safety. I passed a part of last night at the assembly, wish- 
 ing to protest by my vote against these execrable measures. 
 My paper has not been suppressed, but the police are con- 1 
 fiscating it as it is distributed. If this kind of thing goes ) 
 on, the censorship will soon be re-established, and then the f 
 stamp. For my part, I am resolved to do my duty to the 
 bitter end ; so long as it is possible to write, I shall write. 
 
 He kept his word. During the four months which 
 followed the outbreak of June he continued to defend, 
 with his still powerful pen, the threatened interests 
 of the young Eepublic and the cause of the starving 
 people, and during that time he welcomes in his cor- 
 respondence any signs of relaxation in the general 
 tension, and of the gradual return of the unemployed 
 to work. Then suddenly we come upon a letter to 
 Pessoliaire, dated October 27, in which he says : — 
 
 The Peuple Constituant was condemned yesterday by ^ 
 a magistrate and a jury appointed under Louis Philippe. ; 
 M. Veyron-Lacroix is to go to prison for a month, while I 
 am to pay, including costs, about 1,200 francs for having 
 defended the Eepublic, the principles of order, and the poor 
 people, outlawed en masse, because they asked for bread. 
 
 They are going to nominate a president. Louis Bona- 
 parte and Cavaignac are running against one another, and, 
 in different ways, they are both equally worthy. . . . True 
 Republicans will vote for Ledru-Eollin. Get this known, 
 and see that every one agrees in supporting his candidature. 
 
 Then he threw himself with all his remaining 
 energy into this final struggle, striving to the utmost 
 
332 THE ABBE DE LAMKNNAIS 
 
 to arouse the flagging enthusiasm of his fellow citi- 
 zens of the republic of labour, and thus to make 
 impossible the success of their twofold enemy, the 
 representative of the Empire, and the man whose 
 hand was red with the blood of their comrades. 
 
 It was a hopeless undertaking, and may possibly 
 have contributed to the defeat of the candidate who, 
 at least, was a sincere Republican. And it would be 
 useless to enter into the details of a Campaign which 
 ended in the utter defeat of the democratic party. 
 Suffice it to say that the election of Louis Bonaparte 
 was followed by a series of measures directed against 
 those elements in society which were opposed to the 
 new regime. 
 
 The Peitplc Const itucntt was crippled by a tax 
 ' which made such literature possible only to the rich, 
 and Lamennais was reluctantly compelled to with- 
 draw it. In an article which reminds us of his former 
 days, he took leave of his readers, reminding them 
 that he, too, was poor, and that, like them, a member 
 of the proletariat, he was deprived of the rights of 
 citizenship, bidding them hope in the future, which 
 was in the hands of God. And then, seeing around 
 him the ruins of his dearest hopes, utterly dis- 
 appointed, he turned his back for ever on public life. 
 
33c 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 CLOSING SCENES 
 
 Good-jjye, be careful of your health, and do not, through 
 your own fault, bring on a relapse, although, to tell the 
 truth, the best course, as Tertullian says, is to get out of 
 this sad world as soon as possible, provided always that one 
 is certain that duty^does not require one's presence in it. 
 
 Thus ended a short correspondence which, in the 
 summer of 1848, had broken the long silence which, 
 since their rupture at La Chenaie, had separated 
 Feli de Lamennais from Abbe Jean. The former had 
 heard that his brother was seriously ill, and had 
 written to him. Indeed, he even appears to have 
 thought of a more decisive move, for, on the same 
 day, June 28, 1848, he had written to Ange Blaize : — 
 
 Make them get on, I beg of you, with the work at La 
 ChSnaie. When the walls are finished, and the earth is 
 laid down, they must plant the espaliers and other fruit 
 trees. I am anxious about these things, whether I am to 
 see them or not. It is possible under certain circumstances 
 that I may decide to return to La Chenaie ; the contrary is also 
 possible. Who knows to-day what the morrow will bring ? 
 It would be better to live in exile than in one's country if it 
 is to remain in the hands of those who have been allowed to 
 gain the upper hand. 
 
 But the hope had never been fulfilled, and 
 
334 THE ABBE DE LAMENTS AIS 
 
 Lamennais had remained in Paris, absorbed in the 
 struggle to which he had devoted what remained of 
 his former power. 
 
 Now that his political ideal had failed him, at the 
 .very moment when it had seemed about to be realised, 
 that he had finally quitted the arena of public life, he 
 began to feel the full meaning of the isolation in 
 which he stood. He would have liked to retire to 
 the country, there to end his days in peacefi seclu- 
 sion, but he could not afford it. He might have 
 returned to La Chenaie, but he did not wish to meet 
 his brother, or to bring about a reconciliation with 
 him, and so he was compelled to live on amid the 
 noise and bustle of the capital, making himself as 
 comfortable as might be in different lodgings, none 
 of which he kept for long, being compelled to leave 
 them, either through unsuitability of the neighbour- 
 hood or stress of poverty. 
 
 He tried for a time to find solace in his corre- 
 spondence with his political friends, wishing to inspire 
 them with hopes which he himself seems hardly to 
 have shared, but he does not appear to have been 
 always successful in submitting to the self-restraint 
 which was necessary for this. In July, for instance, 
 1850, he wrote to one of them : — 
 
 How resist the profound grief inspired by the spectacle 
 which now presents itself to us '? Never did the world see • 
 anything like it, and I know nothing so terrifying as crime 
 combined with imbecility. The men who, in their blind 
 passion, are hurrying France to its destruction, do not 
 suspect that they are preparing their own punishment, a 
 terrible punishment, for unmeasured oppression will lead to 
 
CLOSING SCENES 335 
 
 unmeasured revenge. In closing the way to peaceful pro- 
 gress, they are causing to germinate in the bosom of the 
 masses thoughts of violence and anger. ... A bad spirit of 
 jacquerie is fermenting among the peasantry of a part of 
 France. They had consoled themselves in their misery by 
 the hope of a better future, to be created by universal suf- 
 frage. Now that they are deprived of their right, declared 
 to be outside society, they will appeal to force, and will arm 
 themselves with their iron tools, as did the slaves in the 
 time of Spartacus. That is where those madmen are lead- 
 ing us. . . . who have taken possession of the machinery 
 of government, hideous worms who, squeezing themselves 
 through the cracks in the great tomb which is called the 
 past, try to draw the people after them, that they may feed 
 on them in the lonejy silence of the night. . . . 
 
 M. Barbet sends you all sorts of messages. He is 
 feeling pretty well in spite of the heat, "fthich does not suit 
 him. 
 
 From about this time till the day of his death 
 this M. Barbet seems to have been constantly with 
 him. We shall meet him again presently. 
 
 In the midst of his solitude it was well for 
 Lamennais that some of his old friends continued to 
 visit him. Many of them had passed away. The 
 Marquis de Coriolis, Mine, de Senfft, and Marion, to 
 whom he had poured out his inmost thoughts in his 
 letters, had quitted the arena of life, the last only in 
 '48, and in 1844 he had received a heart-rending 
 letter from Mile, de Villiers, whom he had known 
 at the Feuillantines, who lay on her death-bed, and 
 who wrote to him that she offered her last prayers 
 and her sufferings for his conversion. 
 
 He tried to comfort himself in speaking words of 
 
336 
 
 THE ABBE 1)E LAMENN.iIS 
 
 kindness to his friends. In January 1852 he wrote 
 to Dessoliaire : ' We must not be sorry for those who 
 go away at the present time. Think of this, and you 
 will be consoled for the loss of your father. Some 
 sooner, some later; we shall all meet in a better 
 w^rld.' But he felt that he was alone, and he could 
 not bear the thought of living on and gradually 
 dwindling away in the midst of old associations. ' If 
 my health,' he wrote in the same month to Blaize, 
 ' if my health made it possible for me to stand the 
 fatigues of a voyage, and I could arrange my affairs 
 in such a way as to give myself sufficient security, if 
 not that I could live in easy circumstances, at least 
 that I could be assured of the bare necessaries, it is 
 possible that I might decide to end, far from this 
 country, a life which is already too long.' 
 
 But he could not escape from Paris, and he was 
 compelled, to the end, to drag out a weary existence 
 in the midst of surroundings which were anything 
 but cheerful. Shortly before the death of Marion, 
 Lamennais had written to him : — 
 
 I see no hope of petting out of these depressing lodgings 
 before two years. I should have to get some one to take my 
 tenancy from me ; that would be a stroke of fortune I dare 
 not count upon. . . . Two more winters in this ice-house ! 
 It is hard ! 
 
 Make the most, my dear friend, of your pure air, of 
 your beautiful river, of your quiet garden. It is at least 
 pleasant to think that those whom one loves have found 
 in life a less thorny path than that up which one has been 
 oneself compelled to climb. . 
 
 After years of wandering from district to district 
 
CLOSING SOENISS 337 
 
 in a vain search after lodgings combining comfort 
 with a rent which he could afford, Lamennais finally 
 settled down in an apartment in the Rue du Grand' 
 Chantier, No. 12. It was probably while there that he 
 received a visit which is mentioned by M. Roussel : — 
 
 One flay M. Houet, who was then in Paris, went to see 
 his unfortunate master, whom he found living in a room 
 more than modest, situated on the fourth or fifth floor. 
 It was winter. During the conversation, Lamennais noticed 
 that his former disciple often looked sadly at the cold 
 hearth. ' Well', yes,' he said, with a smile, ' there is no 
 fire ; it is an economy necessitated hy my financial position. 
 But iirtlocs not prevent me from beginning my day early ; 1 
 wrap myself in this travelling coat which you see here, and so 
 protect myself to some extent from the cold. If a ray of sun 
 pays me a visit, it is always welcome. The important thing, 
 my dear Houet, is to do one's duty ; everything lies in that.' 
 
 But what duty was it possible for him to fulfil ? 
 The long dreaded coup d'etat had come and gone ; ) 
 France was no longer, even in name, a Republic, and , 
 those whom he might have influenced were counted i 
 for nothing in the existing constitution. In former 
 days he would have gone about among the poor, or 
 watched by the bedsides of the sick and dying ; but 
 now he was too old, too broken in health, and he but 
 seldom left his room. In fact, Barbet was his only 
 constant companion, for his older friends, men who, 
 like Vitrolles, could have drawn him from himself, 
 wandering with him in imagination through the 
 memories of the past, were old and feeble as he was, 
 and were rarely able to visit him, while men of the 
 generation of Houet were tied by their work to posts 
 
338 
 
 THE AMlE DE LAMENXAIS 
 
 m the country, generally far from Paris. Sometimes 
 he relieved himself by working at his translation of 
 Dante, which was not destined to see the light during 
 his lifetime; but even such a palliative was not 
 always possible, for his imagination was no longer 
 characterised by its former vividness, and when, as 
 sometimes happened, it showed signs of re-awakening, 
 it was not for long. 
 
 This it is which gives a peculiar tone of sadness 
 to his last letters. The sudden bursts of brilliant 
 sarcasm which have so often roused us to thoughts 
 of life and hope, in the midst of the gloomiest periods, 
 are now almost entirely absent. He constantly 
 speaks of the health of his companion, of his own 
 failing strength, of the mental and bodily ills which 
 result from it, of old age, of isolation, and through all 
 there is a kind of longing for death, the one true 
 friend of those who are utterly alone in the world. 
 Who would not feel the terrible pathos of the letter, 
 almost the last in their correspondence, which he 
 wrote to Vitrolles on September 14, 1853 ? — 
 
 I wont, about ten days ago, to the Zoological Gardens, 
 and saw there, lying in the sun, that monstrous beast which 
 they call a hippopotamus ; the crowd stood round it, joyful, 
 happy. One would have said that it was a family feast. 
 For my part, dreaming, I retired into those long deserted 
 alleys, bordered by beds of flowers, autumn flowers, without 
 perfume, as those of life in its decline. Then I felt the 
 awakening within me, faint, sad, the love of nature, formerly 
 so strong in me ; I heard the voices of the past, as a far-off 
 echo, and my thoughts floated vaguely in a' mingling of 
 •memories and sensations, almost indistinguishable. 
 
CLOSING SCENES 330 
 
 Little more than four months later Lamennais 
 was on his death-bed. The Abbe" Jean received the 
 news from a friend in Paris, and he forwarded the 
 letter to Houet, with the words ' Read, and with me 
 weep and pray.' 
 
 From the first it was evident that the sick 
 man was watched by Barbet and other of his later 
 friends, who were anxious to protect him from visits 
 which, besides irritating him, might cause him, 
 in a moment of weakness, to revert to his forn t 
 opinions. 
 
 ' M. do Vitrolles,' said the correspondent of the 
 Abbe Jean, ' is furious with these people, who even 
 wished to prevent him from coming, which he did in 
 spite of them. M. Martin did not dare to go, for he 
 heard that M. Fcli had said that he did not wish to 
 see him.' And the writer added in a postscript : 
 ' We think that if Augustine were to come it would 
 be useful, for then these strangers would no longer be 
 masters.' 
 
 Accordingly, at the beginning of February 1851, 
 Augustine de . Kertanguy, Lamennais' niece, the 
 widow of his former disciple, arrived in Paris. On 
 the 3rd of that month the same correspondent in- 
 formed the Abbe Jean that she had gone with his 
 sister to see Feli, and in a postscript to the same 
 letter he added : ' My sister [Madame de Grandville] 
 has just come back. I open my letter to tell you 
 that she has seen our dear invalid, who is steadily 
 getting better, but she found him terribly changed, 
 and it was on condition that sbe should not speak to 
 
3 *° THE ABBE BE LAMENNAIS 
 
 him that they allowed her to come in. Augustine is 
 not to see him till to-morrow.' 
 
 About a fortnight later Madame de Kertanguy 
 herself wrote to her uncle, describing her first visit : 
 ' I wished to speak to him a little about God, and 
 this is how I began : " Feli, my children want you 
 to know that they are thinking of you, that they are 
 praying for you, that they have gone to communion 
 and are having Masses said for your intention." ' 
 And she concludes by saying that she has protected 
 him from a visit from two priests. 
 
 On the 20th she describes a longer interview : — 
 
 I found my uncle better. ... He spoke to me of my 
 property in Lower Brittany, and then of his health, which 
 seems to trouble him. He said to me : ' I feel that the end 
 has come, I must resign myself to the will of God ; I shall 
 be happy when I am at rest with Him.' I answered : ' Yes, 
 my dear Feli, God's will be done ; we are only happy when 
 wc are with Him, buc you are better.' And I tried to 
 reassure him, but he said : ' Do not speak so.' . . . Then 
 there was a moment of silence, after which, my good uncle, 
 I took upon myself to speak of your longing to be near your 
 brother, a longing the fulfilment of which was beyond your 
 strength, and I told him how your friends had prevented you 
 from setting out for Paris, and Uncle Feli said : ' I am glad 
 he did not come.' I answered that it would have shocked 
 you to see him so ill. ' Yes,' he said, ' write to him that I 
 have been worse than I am to-day.' ... I asked him 
 whether he would allow me to send you a message from him ; 
 he did not answer, and I said : ' My dear Feli, my Uncle 
 Jean is broken down with grief ; for some nights he has not 
 been able to sleep, a word from you would do him so much 
 good.' . . . He pulled himself together and said, as he would 
 have done formerly: ' Send it him.' I continued: 'I shall 
 
CLOSING SCENES 341 
 
 give my Uncle Jean all kinds of messages from you.' ' Yes,' 
 he said affectionately, and then I left him.' 
 
 But the reconciliation was never completed. The 
 Abbe Jean was persuaded by his friends that his post 
 of duty was at the bedside of his brother. With 
 touching devotion, in. defiance both of age and failing 
 health, he started on the journey to Paris ; but he 
 got no further than Eennes, where it was recognised 
 that further exertion would be fatal to him. Augus- 
 tine de Kertanguy continued to do her utmost for 
 her uncle, but she was practically alone, for those 
 who sympathised with her were rarely admitted to 
 the room of the dying man, and she herself was often 
 unable to overcome the opposition of those who 
 jealously guarded him. 
 
 On the 23rd she wrote to Jean: 'On Saturday, 
 I shall send you news; to-morrow I shall know 
 nothing ; one cannot put any trust in what M. 
 Barbet says.' And two days later : ! I am sick at 
 heart, the more so that I know that this will break 
 yours. Yesterday I went to my uncle's house. I 
 saw only M. Barbet, who told me that our dear Feli 
 was losing strength, and that ho did not dare to go 
 into his room. I asked him if my uncle knew that I 
 was still in Paris ; he answered : ' No, and I do not 
 feel disposed to tell kim.' 
 
 On the evening of the 26th she managed to get 
 to her uncle's room. She was shocked by his altered 
 appearance, and she said, ' Feli, ivoald you like to sec 
 a priest I You would like to see a p>riest ? ' Lamen- 
 nais answered : ' No.' His niece went on : ' liejledj 
 
342 THE ARRE RE LAMEXXAIS 
 
 I beseech you.' But he pulled himself together, and 
 said in a firmer tone : « No, no, no, leave me in peace.' 
 This scene is related in the proces-verbal, drawn up 
 and signed by those who watched over him through 
 his illness. 
 
 Next day a letter was written by one of his little 
 grand-nephews, who had been left in Brittany with 
 his brothers : — 
 
 My dear good Uncle Feli, — 
 
 My brothers and I have been gladdened by a letter from 
 my mother, who says that you are better, and I hope that God 
 will soon bring you back to health. He is so good that He 
 will not refuse your recovery to the prayers, feeble though 
 they are, which we are always offering for you. I should 
 like to be with you, to help my mother in taking care of you ; 
 but, since it is God's will that I should remain here, I offer 
 Him, for your health, the unpleasantness I feel at being so 
 far from you, able to help you only by my feeble prayers. 
 
 Good-bye, my dear Uncle Feli, you know you can always 
 rely on the increasing friendship of your grand-nephew, 
 
 Elie de Kertanuuy. 
 
 This touching letter never reached him. It came, 
 when all was over, into the hands of the broken- 
 hearted niece and mother, who forwarded it to the 
 Abbe Jean with the words : ' The poor children are 
 doing all they can to soften my grief.' 
 
 On the 2Gth it became evident to all who were 
 near him that the end was approaching. Towards 
 evening he intimated that he wished to speak with 
 Emile Forgues, to whom he had entrusted the publi- 
 cation of his correspondence and of his translation of 
 Dante. 
 
CLOSING KCKNKS 343 
 
 He had sent for me [says that writer] when he realised 
 that his last hour was at hand. Bending over him, I had 
 received his last farewell to his old friend M. de Vitrolles, 
 and a recommendation not to allow myself to he turned . . . 
 from the duty he had confided in me. When he had heard 
 my solemn promise, he seemed relieved. . . . 
 
 A profound silence reigned in the room where his life 
 was slowly ebbing away. Not a murmur and, so to speak, 
 not a movement was heard. "With the exception of the 
 nurse, no one was there but his niece and one of her 
 friends. . ■. ■ . M. Barbet came and went between this room 
 and the study, where a few friends were passing the evening. 
 At about eleven o'clock there were only three or four of us, 
 and the rest of the night passed thus. 
 
 At about t\\;o in the morning Barbet came to 
 Forgues and told him that Lamennais had tried to 
 speak, that he had heard something about fapera, 
 but that he had been unable to understand anything 
 more. Seeing this, with a sign of helpless irritation, 
 Lamennais 
 
 had turned his face to the wall. Once more there was 
 silence, and my tired eyes followed on the clock the inexor- 
 able march of time. 
 
 The day was already come when I heard, for the last 
 time, the voice of the dying man, who was then alone with 
 the nurse. The servant was called. His friends gathered 
 round the bed. He was raised up, but he fainted in the 
 effort. 
 
 The agony was prolonged. I turned my eyes from the 
 cruel sight, and went to the window. I could see from it 
 the little gardens enclosed by houses, the dark skeletons of 
 leafless trees, the blackened pathways surrounding plots of 
 withered grass. The pale winter sun, piercing the morning 
 mist, threw over the melancholy scene a brightness which 
 was damp and veiled. 
 
344 THE ARI5K DE LAMEXXAIS 
 
 Tired out by watching and anxiety, Augustine de 
 Kertanguy had gone away with her friend. After 
 taking a little food, she had gone to Muss, and was 
 now in a neighbouring church praying for her uncle, 
 whom she had seen alive for the last time. 
 
 That last fond farewell, faintly uttered on the 
 previous evening, had been brought to the Baron de 
 Vitrolles, and he hurried, on this morning of the 27th, 
 to the bedside of his friend. 
 
 It was nino o'clock when he. got to the room. 
 ' I found,' he afterwards said, 'that my unfortunate 
 friend had lost consciousness. In vain I twice laid 
 my hand on his breast. His respiration was quick 
 and uncertain ; and, at the end of about twenty-five 
 minutes, or half an hour, we knew that he had 
 breathed his last.' 
 
 Lamennais had gone to his rest. ' Ce sont les 
 bons moments,' he had said wearily, as he laid himself 
 down to his last sleep. Then all had become silent, 
 and there was no sign of recognition, no word of 
 greeting for his old friend, his true companion in 
 every period of his stormy life, bound to him by a 
 sympathy which no difference of opinion or ideal had 
 been able to alter. As the old man stood by the bed- 
 side of him oO whom an irony of fate had given the 
 name of Felicitc de Lamennais, he must have felt 
 that he, too, was now alone in the world, that the 
 feeble chain which still bound him to life had been 
 severed, a chain of friendship, consecrated by mutual 
 suffering, sorrow, and disappointment ; he must have 
 longed for some sign which, awakening in him a sad 
 
CLOSING SCENES 345 
 
 echo of the dreary past, might beckon him to that 
 bed of rest for which he also yearned, and to which 
 he was soon to follow. And if an old tradition is to 
 be believed, that sign was vouchsafed to him ; for it 
 is said that when the dying man had ceased to speak, 
 when all around him had become silent, when every 
 outward expression of life was gone, his eye became 
 moist, and a tear rolled down his cheek, worn and 
 furrowed by care and pain. 
 
 He was buried on March 1, 1854. In his will he *" 
 had said : ' I wish to be buried with the poor, and as | 
 the poor. There must be nothing to mark my tomb, 
 not even a simple stone.' To the recently established I 
 government of Louis Napoleon he appeared greater 
 in depth than in life. Measures were taken to pre- "" 
 vent a demonstration. The streets on the way to 
 Pere la Chaise were guarded by police, as were the 
 gates of the cemetery itself, and even the space 
 round the grave. One of the intimate friends who 
 were allowed to be present at this last sad scene has 
 described it in words which I borrow from Forgues : 
 ' The coffin was let down into one of those long ], 
 unsightly ditches in which the people are buried. ; 
 When the earth had been thrown in upon it, a 
 workman asked, "Do you want a cross?" M. 
 Barbet answered, " No." M. de Lamennais had said, [ 
 "Nothing must mark my grave." Not a word was! 
 spoken over the tomb.' 
 
 Some months later, says a contemporary writer, 
 quoted by M. Spuller, ' in June 1854, a carriage drew 
 up one evening before the door of the little chapel at 
 
 A A 
 
AUG 16 MO 
 
 346 THE ABBE DE LAMEXXAIS 
 
 La Chfinaie. An old priest, broken down more by 
 sorrow than by age, got out of it, and kneeling on the 
 pavement, bowing his head covered with grey hairs, 
 before a deserted altar, while his eyes were filled with 
 warm tears, he prayed long and fervently. . . . Then 
 he got up and came out. 
 
 ' Hardly had he advanced a few paces . when his 
 eye fell upon one of the windows of the house, and, 
 raising his arms, as if to reach a form which he alone 
 could see, he cried out : " Fell, Fell ! my brother." . . . 
 
 ' It was the Abbe Jean de Lamennais.' 
 
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