‘You take these troubles too seriously, you lay them too much to heart,’ continued the Bishop of Lisieux. ‘Let the boys wrangle over their precious _cahiers_ and _doléances_; we know very well that they are sops--sops to Cerberus. The Government will never read them, and it pleases the poor fellows to be called to scribble their complaints. Possibly the charming queen wants curl-papers for the ladies of the Court, and has hit on this sweet expedient of obtaining paper at no personal cost.’ ‘I cannot, and will not, stand this much longer,’ said the Bishop of Évreux. ‘I am like the martyr who was stabbed to death with the styles of his scholars. It is the indignity which I am subjected to that galls me to the quick.’ ‘Put your pride in your pocket,’ laughed M. de la Ferronnais. ‘We have long ago learned to pocket our conscience at the bidding of the Crown; perhaps our self-respect may fill the other pocket, and so balance be preserved.’ The Bishop of Évreux did not answer. The Cathedral bell had ceased, and, with an expression of impatience and disgust visible to all in the room, he rang his hand-bell and opened the sitting. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘we have before us this day an important duty to fulfil. Let me ask of you to remember that it is not to be undertaken lightly and in a spirit of private pique. You have to elect delegates to the national council. You are hardly aware how great are the issues in the hands of that assembly. If you send men to utter there the wild sentiments you have been pleased to express in your paper to the king, you will revolutionise France and the Church. That there have been, and still exist, abuses in the political and ecclesiastical worlds, I am the last to deny. In times of great excitement, extreme partizans of change may precipitate the constitution into an abyss from which it would take centuries of reconstruction to recover it. You will be good enough to remember that the Church in this land is established, that it enjoys great privileges and possessions; that to wrest from her those possessions would be to leave her suddenly in a condition of destitution for which she is wholly unprovided, and to rob her of her privileges will be to subject her to an indignity from which it is your place to shield her, as your spiritual mother and the bride of Christ. Gentlemen, hitherto you have exhibited yourselves as a compact and resolute body of malcontents. I do not use the word in an injurious sense. I say you have exhibited yourselves as malcontents, as dissatisfied with the existing state of affairs in Church and State. If you wish to have abuses rectified, it will not be by violent men who endeavour to tear down every institution which by its antiquity has become full of rents, but it will be by men of calm judgment and reconstructive ability, who will carefully and reverently restore and re-adapt what is decayed and antiquated. I ask of you, then, in