The executioner of the justice of the vanities was M. Hoffmann[14], to whom may God grant peace! The _Journal des Débats_ was no longer free; its proprietors had no power in it, and the censors registered my condemnation in its pages. M. Hoffmann, however, forgave the Battle of the Franks and some other pieces in the work; but, if he thought Cymodocée attractive, he was too excellent a Catholic not to grow indignant at the profane conjunction of the truths of Christianity and the fables of mythology. Velléda did not save me. It was imputed to me as a crime that I had changed Tacitus' German druidess into a Gallic woman, as though I had wanted to borrow anything beyond an harmonious name! And behold, we see the Christians of France, to whom I had rendered such great services by setting up their altars again, stupidly taking it into their heads to be scandalized on the gospel word of M. Hoffmann! The title of the _Martyrs_ had misled them: they expected to read a martyrology, and the tiger who tore only a daughter of Homer to pieces seemed to them a sacrilege. The real martyrdom of Pope Pius VII., whom Bonaparte had brought as a prisoner to Paris, did not scandalize them, but they were quite roused by my un-Christian fictions, as they called them. And it was M. the Bishop of Chartres[15] who undertook to punish the horrible impieties of the author of the _Génie du Christianisme._ Alas, he must realize that to-day his zeal is wanted for very different contests! M. the Bishop of Chartres is the brother of my excellent friend M. de Clausel, a very great Christian, who did not allow himself to be carried away by so sublime a virtue as the critic, his brother. I thought it my duty to reply to my censors, as I had done in the matter of the _Génie du Christianisme_. Montesquieu[16], with his defense of the _Esprit des lois_, encouraged me. I was wrong. Authors who are attacked might say the finest things in the world, and yet excite merely the smiles of impartial minds and the ridicule of the crowd. They place themselves on a bad ground: the defensive position is antipathetic to the French character. When, in reply to objections, I pointed out that, in stigmatizing this or that passage, they had attacked some fine relic of antiquity, beaten on the facts, they extricated themselves by next saying that the _Martyrs_ was a mere "patchwork." When I justified the simultaneous presence of the two religions by the authority of the Fathers of the Church themselves, the reply was that, at the period in which I placed the action of the _Martyrs_, paganism no longer existed among great minds.