fashion when you were young, I have no hesitation in saying that in 1830 it is only the clergy, under the guidance of Rome, who has the ear of the lower classes.
"Fifty thousand priests repeat the same words on the day appointed by their chiefs, and the people—who after all provide soldiers—will be more touched by the voices of its priests than by all the versifying in the whole world." (This personality provoked some murmurs.)
"The clergy has a genius superior to yours,' went on the cardinal raising his voice. "All the progress that has been made towards this essential point of having an armed party in France has been made by us." At this juncture facts were introduced. "Who used eighty thousand rifles in Vendée?" etc., etc.
"So long as the clergy is without its forests it is helpless. At the first war the minister of finance will write to his agents that there is no money to be had except for the curé. At bottom France does not believe, and she loves war. Whoever gives her war will be doubly popular, for making war is, to use a vulgar phrase, the same as starving the Jesuits; making war means delivering those monsters of pride—the men of France—from the menace of foreign intervention."
The cardinal had a favourable hearing. "M. de Nerval," he said, "will have to leave the ministry, his name irritates and to no purpose."
At these words everybody got up and talked at the same time. "I will be sent away again," thought Julien, but the sapient president himself had forgotton both the presence and existence of Julien.
All eyes were turned upon a man whom Julien recognised. It was M. de Nerval, the prime minister, whom he had seen at M. the due de Retz's ball.
The disorder was at its height, as the papers say when they talk of the Chamber. At the end of a long quarter of an hour a little quiet was established.
Then M. de Nerval got up and said in an apostolic tone and a singular voice:
"I will not go so far as to say that I do not set great store on being a minister.
"It has been demonstrated to me, gentlemen, that my name will double the forces of the Jacobins by making many
