The theatres would be closed to-night.--What would you take for the subject of your _feuilleton_?--No more Opéra balls to fill your columns,--no more novels to dissect; for balls, novels, plays, are the real pomps of Satan, if we are to believe our holy Mother Church.--The actress would dismiss her protector and could no longer pay you for puffing her.--Nobody would subscribe to your newspapers; people would read Saint Augustine, they would go to church, they would tell their beads. That would be very praiseworthy, perhaps, but you would gain nothing by it. If people were virtuous, what would you do with your articles on the immorality of the age? You see plainly that vice is good for something. But it is the fashion nowadays to be virtuous and Christ-like, it is an attitude people affect; they pose as Saint Jeromes just as they used to pose as Don Juans; they are pale and wasted, they wear their hair as the apostles did, they walk with folded hands and eyes glued to the ground, they assume an expression sugared to perfection; they have an open Bible on the mantel, a crucifix and consecrated box-wood above their beds; they never swear, they smoke but little, and they chew almost not at all.--With that they become Christians, they talk about the sanctity of art, the lofty mission of the artist, the poesy of Catholicism, about Monsieur de La Mennais, about the painters of the angelic school, about the Council of Trent, about progressive humanity, and about a thousand other fine things.--Some infuse a little republicanism into their religion, they are not the least interesting. They couple Robespierre and Jesus Christ in the most cheerful way and amalgamate with praiseworthy gravity the Acts of the Apostles and the decrees of the _Holy_ Convention--that is the sacramental title; others add, for a final ingredient, some Saint-Simonian ideas.--These latter are complete, they rest upon a square foundation; after them we can look for nothing better. Human absurdity can go no farther,--_has ultra metas_--etc. They are the Hercules Pillars of Burlesque. Christianity is so in vogue by reason of the prevailing hypocrisy, that even Neo-Christianity enjoys a certain amount of favor. They say that it can boast thus far one recruit, Monsieur Drouineau included. An extremely interesting variety of the moral journalist, properly so-called, is the journalist with a female family. He carries his modest sensitiveness to the point of anthropophagy, or very nearly that. His mode of procedure, although it seems at the first glance simple and easy, is none the less clownish and superlatively entertaining, and in my opinion it deserves to be handed down to posterity--to our last nephews, as the old fogies of the so-called _Grand Siècle_ used to say.