Then the founts of clerical rhetoric are opened. Talleyrand observes in his memoirs that “the intervention of conscience in these money matters gave the speeches a kind of eloquence that is peculiarly at the command of the clergy.” The Archbishop of Auch (with 120,000 a year from his bishopric alone) is deputed to express the common feeling. They are personally most eager to help their country, but the resources they control belong to the service of God and the altar. Is not the King confusing their goods with the monies of “profane commerce”? They sink under “immense burdens,” and are “exhausted” with gratuitous gifts. [The Church has an income of 150,000,000 livres a year.] Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon (with one religious sinecure alone worth 130,000 a year) nods acquiescence. Archbishop Dillon (160,000 a year and odd sinecures), Archbishop de Brienne (only 90,000 as yet—he is not yet Prime Minister), Archbishop de la Rochefoucauld (100,000), and the other prelates agree. Hardly a delegate but is _abbé commendataire_ of some place or other. The abbacy of St. Bernard’s historic monastery, where the monks once ate the leaves of the forest, is worth 400,000 a year. The Benedictines of Saint-Maur (1,672 in number) have a revenue of 8,000,000 livres. Cardinal Prince de Rohan has a total income of 2,500,000 a year, and is heavily in debt. So is Dillon, who spends six months of each year in hunting, and a great deal of the rest in less healthy occupation. However, they will contrive to find sixteen millions this time—and trust the King will return it in other ways. The Abbé de Périgord,[7] pale, silent, in black mantle and square bonnet, observes it all, and makes (internally) reflections on venerable institutions and “zeal.” In the course of the sittings several other questions came on that were not without irony. Chief amongst these were the decay of the monastic orders and the growth of infidelity and Protestantism. Some of the most powerful prelates in the Assembly, as well as many deputies of the second order, were Voltairean in opinion and less than Voltairean in practice. All joined in the appeals to King and Pope to reform or suppress the corrupt and decaying monastic bodies, to stem the flood of philosophic literature, and to arrest the growth of Protestantism. They were honest at least in their attack on monasticism. It was one of the ideas of the philosophers, and was rapidly spreading amongst the people. Hardly a day passed now without an attack on them, and Talleyrand says that not a pen was lifted in their defence during the twenty years preceding the Revolution. At the States-General in 1789 one peasant deputy arrived with instructions to work for the suppression of pheasants, rabbits, and monks. Besides the usual struggle to disavow the feudal obligations, which the Court lawyers were constantly trying to fix on the clergy, the other matters discussed were mainly disciplinary.