Who is there that has not in the morning of life read with delight of the martial prowess and religious fervor of Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of Orleans? Her love of her church, and her love for her country, ought to be remembered by men who are now playing fast and loose with the fortunes of both. Who but will admit that their Excellencies, Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, with their imperious sway, did more to extend the glory of France than either of the great Louises under whom they ministered? What student of French history could forget the names of La Valliere, De Montespan, and Maintenon, brilliant, charming, but dissolute, who, losing royal favor, sought and found solace in the sacred precincts of the cloister? The grand cathedrals at Rheims, at Rouen; Nôtre Dame and the Madeleine at Paris; the many rare and splendid chapels to the famous chateaux of monarchs, and princes, that line the Loire, the Seine, the Rhone, and Garonne—do they not speak in ancient protest to the late separation and sequestration? Who but that remembers the sweet, dignified bearing, and devout humility of the peasant husband and wife bowed in prayer, in the field, at the ringing of the angelus, as portrayed by Millet? Typical of religious France! Can such things be swept away and become a mere memory at the beck of secular and temporal power? The French Revolution of 1789 with its consequent vulgar excess brought about in 1801 the so-called “Concordat,” it being a carefully drawn agreement between Pius VII and Napoleon, which restored, with material restrictions, the power of the church in France. When one writes of the church in France he means the Roman Catholic Church, for ninety per cent of the communicants of religion there belong to that denomination. There is little or no doubt but that Napoleon overreached the Pope in that agreement. Only divinity itself could have coped with the masterly genius of that most wonderful man—the “man of destiny”—who, in changing the map of the world by his sword, wrought a greater change in its human affairs through his policies. Much church property had been confiscated during the revolution, and had passed from the state to other hands. The titles, so acquired, to that property were to be left undisturbed by the restoration of the church. Again, the government reserved, in the Concordat, the right to nominate the archbishops and bishops of the church, and assumed and asserted the right to determine their attitude between the Vatican and the state.