"Our country-people," writes Michelet, "went straight to the tower. For many centuries that tower had seemed to sneer at the valley, sterilizing, blighting, oppressing it with its deadly shadow. A guardian of the country in barbarous times, standing there as a sentinel, it became later an object of horror. In 1789 what was it but the odious witness of bondage, a perpetual outrage to repeat every morning to the man trudging to his labor the everlasting humiliation of his race? 'Work, work on, son of serfs! Earn for another's profit. Work, and without hope.' Every morning and every evening, for a thousand years, perhaps more, that tower had been cursed. A day came when it was to fall. "O glorious day, how long have you been in coming! How long our fathers expected and dreamed of you in vain! The hope that their sons would at length behold you was alone able to support them, otherwise they would have no longer consented to live. They would have died in their agony. And what has enabled me, their companion, laboring beside them in the furrow of history and drinking their bitter cup, to revive the suffering Middle Ages, and yet not die of grief? Was it not you, O glorious day, first day of liberty? I have lived in order to relate your history!" Thus far the religious sentiment of France, as expressed by nearly all the pastors and the great proportion of their Christian flocks, was warmly in favor of the Revolution. The higher clergy alone, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, who were usually the younger sons of the nobles, and were thus interested in the perpetuation of abuses, united with the lords. As in the National Assembly so it was in the nation itself, that the working clergy were among the most conspicuous of the sons of freedom. Religious services were held in the churches in grateful commemoration of the fall of the Bastille.[202] The vast cathedral of Nôtre Dame was thronged to listen to a sermon from the Abbé Fauchet, who consecrated to the memory of those who fell on that occasion the homage of his extraordinary eloquence. He selected for his text the words of St. Paul, "For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty."--Gal. v. 13. "The false interpreters of the divine oracle," said the abbé, "have wished, in the name of heaven, to keep the people in subjection to the will of their masters. They have consecrated despotism. They have rendered God an accomplice with tyrants. These false teachers exult because it is written, '_Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's_.' But that which is not Cæsar's, is it necessary to render to him that? And _liberty_ does not belong to Cæsar. It belongs to human nature."[203]