Madame Elisabeth wrote to Madame de Raigecourt, July 8, 1792: "It would need all Madame de Sévigné's eloquence to describe properly what {240} happened yesterday; for it was certainly the most surprising thing, the most extraordinary, the greatest, the smallest, etc., etc. But, fortunately, experience may aid comprehension. In a word, here were Jacobins, Feuillants, republicans, and monarchists, abjuring all their discords and assembling near the tree of the Constitution and of liberty, to promise sincerely that they will act in accordance with law and not depart from it. Luckily, August is coming, the time when, the leaves being well grown, the tree of liberty will afford a more secure shelter." What had happened on the day before Madame Elisabeth wrote this letter? There had been a very singular session of the Legislative Assembly. In the morning, a woman named Olympe de Gouges, whose mother was a dealer in second-hand clothing at Montauban, being consumed with a desire to be talked about, had caused an emphatic placard to be posted up, in which she preached concord between all parties. This placard was like a prologue to the day's session. Among the deputies there was a certain Abbé Lamourette, the constitutional bishop of Lyons, who played at religious democracy. He was an ex-Lazarist who had been professor of theology at the Seminary at Toul. Weary of the conventual yoke, he had left his order, and at the beginning of the Revolution was the vicar-general of the diocese of Arras. He had published several works in which he sought to reconcile philosophy and religion. Mirabeau was {241} one of his acolytes and adopted him as his theologian in ordinary. Finding him fit to "bishopize" (_à evêquailler_), to use his own expression, the great tribune recommended him to the electors of the Rhone department. It was thus that the Abbé Lamourette became the constitutional bishop of Lyons. After his consecration, he issued a pastoral instruction in such agreement with current ideas that Mirabeau, his protector, induced the Constituent Assembly to have it sent as a model to every department in France. In 1792, the Abbé Lamourette was fifty years old. Affable, unctuous, his mouth always full of pacific and gentle words, he naïvely preached moderation, concord, and fraternity in conversations which were like so many sermons. For several days the discussions in the Assembly had been of unparalleled violence. Suspicion, hatred, rancor, wrath, were unchained in a fury that bordered on delirium. Right and left emulated each other in outrages and invectives. Lafayette's appearance and the fear of a foreign invasion had disturbed all minds. The National Assembly, sitting both day and night, was like an arena of gladiators fighting without truce or pity. It was this moment which the good Abbé Lamourette chose for delivering his most touching sermon from the tribune.