Unfortunately these clashes were even more numerous in the provinces. Some towns, like Avignon, publicly burnt the Concordat. In others, as in Saint-Flour, the new cure, who was accused of having been a juror, was hooted at, and the military had to intervene. The parishioners of Vitre pillaged the church, under the pretext that it had been profaned during the Revolution. Those of La Panissiere, in the Loire, took the belfry by assault to the number of four or five hundred, and pelted the cure, the mayor and the police with stones from above. At Orleans, they went one better. As the new bishop, Bernier, had not only taken part in the negotiations of the Concordat, but was said, no doubt wrongly, to have had a hand in the massacres of the Vendee, his flock had a pail of blood deposited in front of his door during the night. A delicate manner of bidding him welcome,
As a rule things did not go so far, but the Roman clergy meddled too much with politics. A priest in Lot-et-Garonne refused to baptize an infant because the godfather 'did not belong to his party'. Another, in Sambre-Inferieure, used the holy-water sprinkler to cudgel those of his parishioners who displeased him. And if we may believe the Archbishop of Besangon, certain confessors of his diocese ordered their peni-tants to restore Church property in exchange for absolution, and forced dying soldiers to beg God's pardon for having served in the armies of the Republic.
*At Brienne in 1805 Napoleon met an old priest who had been his schoolmaster at the Military School. Seeing him in a brown overcoat, he pretended not to recognize him. 'The soutane was given to the priests so that everybody should know who they were. Go and dress!* he said. Then, when the other had changed, *Ah! Now I recognize you, and I'm very glad to see you!' 2 O, respectable leader of a sacred enterprise, Guide, oh guide our steps towards the Promised Land! Our thirst is a burning one, oh, deign to assuage it! Be to us our Moses and strike upon the rock!
One thing alone could succeed in calming opinion and inculcating mildness and tolerance ~~ the white-robed figure from Rome that was greeted by Paris on November 28,1804. Even in the days of the Most Christian Kings, the city had never set eyes on a Pope, and although little religious as a whole, it could not remain indifferent to such an unaccustomed sight. In the general reaction to the pontifical presence, the mildness, the evangelical simplicity of Pius VII played a great part. When visiting our churches or officiating in them himself, receiving the grand Corps d'etat and the flower of society in the gallery of the Louvre, shown round the sights of Paris-the Invalides, the Monnaie, the H6tel-Dieu, the Quinze-Vingts, the Jardin des Plantes — he appeared interested in everything and spoke kindly to everybody. Prejudice fell away in the presence of this frail old man, whose hand seemed made for blessing.
Without a moment's hesitation the fiercest Jacobins of yesterday bowed their heads before him, from Francois de Neufchateau, saluting him in the name of the Senators, and Frangois de FAude, bringing him the homage of the Tribunate to the melodramatic Lalande, who laid his hand on his heart when presenting the members of the Bureau des Longitudes. David himself, the former friend of Robespierre, having obtained a few sittings from the Sovereign Pontiff, was loud in his praise. 'He really is a Pope, that man/ he said, 'he's a true priest: the gold trimmings on his robes are just a sham!'
For four whole months Pius VII garnered tokens of respect, of enthusiasm even, such as he could hardly have looked for. And when a last ovation greeted him on the balcony of the Pavilion de Flore, on the day of his departure, he was finally convinced that this eldest daughter of the Church no longer had anything about her of the enfant terrible he had been led to expect.
The Pope's visit had enabled the Emperor to be anointed after the fashion of Charlemagne, and the Paris vendors of rosaries to do a roaring trade. One of them is said to have sold more than a hundred dozen a day; another to have made a net profit of 40,000 francs in the month of January alone. Was this not a proof that piety was beginning to make serious progress?
This progress was soon to be rapidly accelerated, as may be gathered from accounts of the religious movement up to the end of the Empire, which tell of the organization of parishes, the development of preaching and missions, encouragement given to welfare work like that of the Filles de Charite, and the creation at Saint-Sulpice of the Congregation by the Abbe de Freyssinous, all of which represented appreciable victories for the Church, signs of a rebirth of which the Concordat had provided the germ.
But a paradoxical situation developed three or four years later when Napoleon, disrupting the harmony he had taken such pains to create, despoiled the Pope of his States, interned him at Savone, got himself excommunicated and remained, in spite of all this, the official master of the clergy.
An extraordinary situation if ever there was one! The most powerful Catholic sovereign of Europe excluded from the Divine Law (He shall be in your sight as a heathen and a publican), and continuing nevertheless to celebrate the mass every Sunday in the chapel of the Tuileries, to appoint bishops, and to be greeted, every time he entered a church, by the traditional Domine, salvum fac imperatorem!
How did the faithful react to such a spectacle? 'If the truth must be told/ wrote a future minister of Louis-Philippe's, of most orthodox opinions, 'nobody gave it a second thought/ Such was Napoleon's authority that his quarrels with the Holy See were looked upon by his contemporaries as mere incidents in foreign politics. *We paid little attention to it/ confesses the Duchesse d'Abrantes, "firstly because we always do take everything lightly, and then because the Emperor himself did not want people to concern themselves with what he did or ordered to be done/
And after all, there was no reason for astonishment. Bonaparte had not really contradicted himself since the day when, as First Consul, receiving some of the Vend^ean leaders at the Luxembourg, he said to them, "I intend to re-establish religion, not for your sake but for mine'.
The programme had been fully carried out. The spiritual was under the control of the temporal, which dictated its will to it. Let nobody attempt to work against it! Napoleon had certainly restored religion, but rather after the fashion in which a road full of pot-holes is repaired by driving a roller over it.
CHAPTER V. SOCIETY AND THE SALONS
Society upside-down - The salon of Mme Montesson - Talleyrand's evening parties - The new Society: Legion of Honour and Empire titles — Receptions at the Tuileries — Literary and artistic salons - A night at Melpomene''s
SOCIETY cannot be improvised. That of the old regime £Jm had almost ceased to exist in 1800, and its successor A jLwas still a topsy-turvy affair. The financiers now in possession of all the money, and occupying the finest houses, would always lack certain talents that are not to be bought. When they attempted to give parties, their dinners, at which people gorged themselves, were more like public banquets, their balls were kermisses of the nouveaux-riches. They mistook luxury for good taste, good living for savoir-uivre.
A woman's charm is not enough to make her a good hostess. People went to Mme Recamier's as if to the theatre, to applaud the beautiful Juliette, whose glances and attitudes, whose whole person, in fact, suggested she was on the stage.