Because the accumulated resentment of the French people as a whole against the shortcomings of their national Church has resulted in a complete divorce from the State, and because the clergy have rebelled against the laws which have recently been passed, and have therefore become in a certain sense outlaws--servants, as it were, of a discredited section of the community--it has been easy for superficial observers to come to the conclusion that the French nation has virtually assumed the garb of atheism. This is always the arrow which strikes the legislative body determined to dissociate itself with any form of religion, but as in England, where devoted Churchmen are ranged on the side of disestablishment, so in France the national voice that spoke for a severance between Church and State was not that of a people without religion, but rather that of a people unwilling to maintain a system which had fallen away from its duty and its ideals. Atheism and agnosticism would appear to be phases in the religious development of the human race, the positions into which various types of mind are driven when dissatisfied with the explanation of the purpose, duty, and future of the individual as set forth by a particular Church. That some new development of the truth will supersede that which has been cast aside seems inevitable. In this period of upheaval what is the attitude of the people, of the peasant, to _M. le Cure_? Social intimacy between priest and parishioners is very great, and the _cure_ is often a very good fellow whose practical religion is much broader than the ecclesiasticism he represents. He is, roughly speaking, of the peasant class and is regarded as socially inferior by the equivalent to the "county" circle of his neighbourhood. Unlike the English clergy, who are often distinguishable from the laity by little besides a distinctive collar and hat, he is always to be seen in his _soutane_ and with white-bordered black lappets beneath his chin. He is, as a rule, anti-Republican, and is therefore out of sympathy with the people and the whole apparatus of the government of to-day. To a huge mass of the people he is nicknamed the _calotin_. Paul Sabatier explains how the association of the Church with politics affects the relations of priest and parishioner:--