In the eighteenth century, when a curé was obliged to report to the "intendant" the number of inhabitants of his parish, he had only to count his communicants at the Easter service; their number was about that of the adult and valid population, say one half or two fifths of the sum total.[5355] Now, at Paris, out of two millions of Catholics who are of age, about one hundred thousand perform this strict duty, aware of its being strict and the imperative prescription of which is stamped in their memory by a rhyme which they have learned in their infancy;[5356] out of one hundred persons, this is equal to five communicants, of which four are women and one is a man, in other words, about one woman out of twelve or thirteen and one man out of fifty. In the provinces,[5357] and especially in the country, there is good reason for doubling and even tripling these figures; in the latter case, the most favorable one and, without any doubt, the rarest, the proportion of professed Christians is that of one to four among women and one man out of twelve. Evidently, with the others who make not attend Church regularly, with the three women and the eleven other men, their faith is only verbal; if they are still Catholics, it is on the outside and not within. Besides this separation from the main body and this indifference, other signs denote disaffection and even hostility.--In Paris, at the height of the Revolution, in May and June 1793, the shopkeepers, artisans and market-women, the whole of the common people, were still religious,[5358] "kneeling in the street" when the Host passed by, and before the relics of Saint Leu carried along in ceremonial procession, passionately fond of his worship, and suddenly melted, "ashamed, repentant and with tears in their eyes, when, inadvertently, their Jacobin rulers tolerated the publicity of a procession. Nowadays, among the craftsmen, shopkeepers and lower class of employees, there is nothing more unpopular than the Catholic Church. Twice, under the Restoration and the second Empire, she has joined hands with a repressive government, while its clergy has seemed to be not merely an efficient organ but, again, the central promoter of all repression.-- Hence, accumulated bitterness that still survives. After 1830, the archbishopric of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois is sacked; in 1871 the archbishop and other ecclesiastical hostages are murdered. For two years after 1830 a priest in his cassock dared not show himself in public;[5359] he ran the risk of being insulted in the streets; since 1871, the majority of the Parisian electors, through the interposition of the Municipal Council which they elect over and over again, persists in driving "Brethren" and "Sisters" from the schools and hospitals in order to put laymen in their places and pay twice as much for work not done as well.[5360]--In the beginning, antipathy was confined to the clergy; through contamination, it reached the doctrine, to include the