Inspector! On one side Saint Benedict, on the other the Inspector of
the streets! What do we know about the State, the regulations, the
administration, and the public undertaker? Any witnesses would be
indignant at the way in which we are treated; we have not even the
right to give our dust to Christ! Your salubrity is a revolutionary
invention. God subordinate to a Police Inspector, such is the age!
Silence, Fauvent!"
Fauchelevent did not feel very comfortable under this douche, but the
prioress continued,--
"The right of the monasteries to sepulture is indubitable, and it
can only be denied by fanatics and schismatics. We live in times of
terrible confusion; people do not know what they should, and know what
they should not. Men are crass and impious; and there are people at
the present day who cannot distinguish between the most mighty Saint
Bernard and that Bernard called of the poor Catholics, a certain
worthy ecclesiastic who lived in the thirteenth century. Others are so
blasphemous as to compare the scaffold of Louis XVI. with the cross of
our Saviour. Louis XVI. was only a king. There are no just or unjust
persons left; the name of Voltaire is known and that of Cæsar de Bus
unknown,--but Cæsar de Bus is blessed, while Voltaire is condemned.
The last archbishop, Cardinal de Périgord, did not even know that
Charles de Gondrin succeeded Bérullus, and François Bourgoin Gondrin,
and Jean François Senault Bourgoin, and Father de Sainte Marthe Jean
François Senault. The name of Father Coton is known, not because he was
one of the three who urged the foundation of the Oratory, but because
he supplied the Huguenot King Henri IV. with material for an oath.
What makes people of the world like Saint Francis de Sales, is that he
cheated at play. And then religion is attacked, and why? Because there
have been bad priests; because Sagittarius, Bishop of Gap, was brother
of Salonces, Bishop of Embrun, and both followed Mommolus. Of what
consequence is all this? Does it prevent Martin of Tours from being a
saint, and having given one half of his cloak to a poor man? The saints
are persecuted, and people close their eyes against the truth. They are
accustomed to the darkness, and the most ferocious beasts are blind
beasts. No one thinks of hell seriously; oh, the wicked people! 'By
the king's order' means at the present day by order of the revolution.
People forget what they owe, either to the living or the dead. We are
forbidden to die in holiness; burial is a civil matter, and this is
horrible. Saint Leon II. wrote two letters expressly,--one to Peter
Notarius, the other to the King of the Visigoths, to combat and reject,
in questions that affect the dead, the authority of the exarchus and
the supremacy of the Emperor. Gauthier, Bishop of Châlons, opposed
Otho, Duke of Burgundy, in this matter. The old magistrates coincided,
and we formerly had a voice in the Chapter itself upon temporal
affairs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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