For instance, you wish to restore a church or to build a new one, and require a considerable sum of money for the purpose. So much the better; out of that requirement, you may draw treasures of charity and religion. {100} Enter the pulpit and state your object; be like a father in the midst of his family. Set the whole case before them, your fears, your hopes, your need, and then add:--"We rely upon you. You will aid me, will you not? for I shall take the lead, and this will be our church." You will then witness how the old French and Christian enthusiasm may be rekindled in the hearts of the people, insomuch that you will be tempted to ask:--"Are we really in the nineteenth century? Are we not still in the middle ages?" All will cooperate: the poor man will offer his two arms, work men will give their day's labor, the agriculturists, if there be any, will supply carts; this one will give money, another wood, a third stone; here windows, and there ornaments will be presented. Who knows but that some, who have never been accustomed to work, will offer to aid in the building? The little _bourgeois Voltairien_, who has been known to speak evil of God and of His curé, even he may wish to have a hand in the erection of the church; so that all will thereby be brought nearer to God, nearer to the truth, and nearer salvation. Similar things have occurred in every part of France; though few have any conception of the existence of such a spirit among the people. We have even heard venerable pastors exclaim on witnessing it:--"I have held this parish for twenty-five years without knowing of it. I could not have believed that my parishioners had so much good in them." {101} Haymon, abbé of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, [Footnote 13] tells us that in the middle ages, kings and mighty men of the time, renowned and wealthy, nobles of both sexes, stooped so low as to lay hold of the ropes attached to the carts laden with provisions and materials for building churches, and drag them to the house of God. And what appeared most astonishing was, that, although owing to its size and heavy burden, the cart was sometimes drawn by upward of a thousand persons, so profound was the silence maintained that nobody's voice was heard above a whisper, and the eye alone could recognize particular individuals in that vast multitude. [Footnote 13: _Manuel de Charité_, p. 244.] Similar spectacles may be witnessed again. Scenes akin to them occur frequently in the least religious parts of the country, and under the most adverse circumstances. One such took place during the present year at the prison of St. Pélagie.