"She had made a deep impression, and left durable memories among the working classes of our town, on her passage through Nîmes some years ago.... The people, my dear friend, the Christian people, recognizes better than _les beaux-esprits_ what true greatness is, and is ever ready to bow before the majesty of a nobly-borne sorrow. No orator could adequately describe the appearance of our church to-day. This great gathering _en blouse ou en veste_,[36] these faces browned by toil and want, bore an expression of nobility and gravity fully suitable to such an occasion.... When one still has such courtiers, is exile a reality?" Reboul would never allow that the irregularities of its representatives were enough of themselves to condemn a system. We have seen how, while recognizing the degeneracy of many churchmen in the XVIth century, he yet denounced the pretended reformers who sought this pretext for attacking the church, and in politics his judgments were equally clear and impartial. "If," he says, "it is still possible to be a republican despite the Reign of Terror, it is not impossible to be a royalist despite a few moral deviations which have disgraced some of our kings. Was the _Directoire_ (a genuine republican product) an assembly of Josephs? And the houses of our day--are they not of glass? It is not wise, therefore, to be incessantly throwing stones.... After all, I return to my original argument: notwithstanding the shadows which darken the great qualities and high virtues of many of our kings, can you find anything better?" Reboul's political faith is traced at length in the following paragraph, which may be called statesmanlike, since it contains a theory of government: "The sovereign is by all means a _responsible_ agent, but I add to this, that the people also, when it makes itself sovereign, is equally responsible. The habit of thought which separates the one from the other is one of the misfortunes of our times. Without _sovereignty_ there can be no nation, nor even a people. There remains but an agglomeration of individuals. When I say _sovereign_ you know, if you understand the language of politics, that I mean any legitimate form of government. This is applicable to all governments. Be sure that it is nonsense to talk of a nation as making its own sovereign. A "nation" which as yet has no sovereignty is no more a nation than a body without its head is a real body."