If any confirmation were needed as to the great hopes the Masonic coterie had founded on the _Associations cultuelles_, we find it in the unanimous outburst of surprise and fury which some of their more moderate Press organs sought in vain to dissimulate. Billingsgate cannot furnish the _Lanterne_ with terms adequate to the occasion; all the more so, that from the beginning it has affirmed, in most scurrilous language, that never, never would the Church refuse the “liberalities” of the law, by which is meant the permission to keep some of her property. Three editorials of _La Lanterne_--November 25th, 1905, “Ils capitulent!”; August 16th, 1906, “C’est la guerre”; and “La folie suprême,” of August 20th--are most interesting revelations of the contemporary Jacobin mind.[19] Even the millions represented by the confiscation of the _menses episcopales_, etc., which the law had assigned to the _Associations cultuelles_, cannot console these sectarian Jacobins, whose budget shows a deficit of hundreds of millions. They loudly proclaim that the law must be enforced _integrally_, forgetting that the numerous articles regarding _Associations cultuelles_ are already null and void, and that they themselves propose to annul those regarding pensions to aged priests. If they had the courage to enforce Article 35 of the law (_police des cultes_) every French bishop would be in prison for reading the encyclical of August 15th in the churches. Other articles of the _police des cultes_ also fall to the ground, as they were aimed at _Associations cultuelles_, who were to be held responsible if a preacher used seditious language in the pulpit. No _Associations cultuelles_ will be formed except by Freemasons masquerading as Catholics; but at least there will be no confusion, no disorganization of the Church, which was the main purpose of the law. Thus has Pius X unmasked their batteries and spiked their guns. They will have to resort to other arms, those of undisguised persecution, the very thing they wished, above all, to avoid. Little is left standing of the Law of Separation but the articles of spoliation and confiscation. If these Jacobins have the courage to enforce them “integrally,” as they say, even to the confiscation of Church edifices, it will mean, for the present, the most threadbare poverty. Whether they will dare to do so remains to be seen. M. Clemenceau stopped the inventories, because, he said, “it was not worth while to have riots and bloodshed for the pleasure of counting a few candelabras.” He and his employers may find that it is not worth while to risk the Republic for the sake of some Church edifices, for which they have no use. They may content themselves for the present with seizing all the available cash, which will go the way of the “billions” of the Congregations, and the exchequer will grow poorer and poorer, till the vanishing point of national bankruptcy is reached as in 1793.[20]