She, the Roman Catholic Church, was now openly at war with civil society. She raised money expressly to carry on her work of conquest; many of the religious congregations had taken to industry and trade; one alone, that of the Good Pastor, realising some twelve millions of francs profit[7] every year by exploiting the forty-seven thousand work-girls who slaved in its two hundred and seven establishments. And the Church sold all kinds of things: alcoholic liqueurs and shoes, medicines and furniture, miraculous waters and embroidered nightgowns for women of bad character. She turned everything into money, she levied the heaviest tribute on public stupidity and credulity by her spurious miracles and her everlasting exploitation of religion. Her wealth amounted to thousands of millions of francs, her estates were immense, and she disposed of enough ready cash to buy parties, hurl them one upon the other, and triumph amid the blood and ruin of civil war. The struggle appeared terrible and immediate to Marc, who had never previously felt how very necessary it was that France should slay that Church if she did not wish to be slain by her. [Footnote 7: $2,316,000.] All at once the Bongards, the Doloirs, the Savins, the Milhommes seemed to appear before him; he could hear them stammering the paltry excuses that came from cowardly hearts and poisoned minds, seeking refuge in ignorance and fear-fraught egotism. They represented France, the scared, brutified masses, handed over to prejudice and clerical imbecility. To rot the people more quickly anti-Semitism had been invented, that revival of religious hate by which too it was hoped to win over even unbelievers who had deserted the Church. But to hurl the people against the Jews and to exploit its ancestral passions was only a beginning; at the end lay a return to slavery, a plunge into darkness and ancient bondage. And to-morrow there would be Bongards, Doloirs, Savins, and Milhommes of a still lower type, more stupefied, more steeped in darkness and falsehood than those of to-day, if the children should still be left in the hands of the Brothers and the Jesuits, on the forms of the many Congregational schools.