His order has produced forty popes, two hundred cardinals, fifty patriarchs, sixteen hundred archbishops, four thousand six hundred bishops, four emperors, twelve empresses, forty-six kings, forty-one queens, three thousand six hundred canonized saints, and has been in existence for fourteen hundred years.
On one side Saint Bernard, on the other the agent of the sanitary department! On one side Saint Benoit, on the other the inspector of public ways! The state, the road commissioners, the public undertaker, regulations, the administration, what do we know of all that? There is not a chance passer-by who would not be indignant to see how we are treated.
We have not even the right to give our dust to Jesus Christ!
Your sanitary department is a revolutionary invention. God subordinated to the commissary of police; such is the age. Silence, Fauvent!"
Fauchelevent was but ill at ease under this shower bath. The prioress continued:--
"No one doubts the right of the monastery to sepulture.
Only fanatics and those in error deny it.
We live in times of terrible confusion. We do not know that which it is necessary to know, and we know that which we should ignore.
We are ignorant and impious.
In this age there exist people who do not distinguish between the very great Saint Bernard and the Saint Bernard denominated of the poor Catholics, a certain good ecclesiastic who lived in the thirteenth century. Others are so blasphemous as to compare the scaffold of Louis XVI. to the cross of Jesus Christ.
Louis XVI.
was merely a king. Let us beware of God!
There is no longer just nor unjust. The name of Voltaire is known, but not the name of Cesar de Bus. Nevertheless, Cesar de Bus is a man of blessed memory, and Voltaire one of unblessed memory.
The last arch-bishop, the Cardinal de Perigord, did not even know that Charles de Gondren succeeded to Berulle, and Francois Bourgoin to Gondren, and Jean-Francois Senault to Bourgoin, and Father Sainte-Marthe to Jean-Francois Senault. The name of Father Coton is known, not because he was one of the three who urged the foundation of the Oratorie, but because he furnished Henri IV., the Huguenot king, with the material for an oath. That which pleases people of the world in Saint Francois de Sales, is that he cheated at play.
And then, religion is attacked. Why?
Because there have been bad priests, because Sagittaire, Bishop of Gap, was the brother of Salone, Bishop of Embrun, and because both of them followed Mommol.
What has that to do with the question?
Does that prevent Martin de Tours from being a saint, and giving half of his cloak to a beggar?
They persecute the saints.
They shut their eyes to the truth.