abitants, representing
the one heresy, the other orthodoxy; the one the French party, the other
the Roman party; the one the party of absolute monarchy, the other that
of progressive constitutionalism, were not elements conducive to the
peace and security of this ancient pontifical city. One understands,
we say, that at the moment when the revolution broke out in Paris, and
manifested itself by the taking of the Bastille, that the two parties,
hot from the religious wars of Louis XIV., could not remain inert in the
presence of each other.

We have said, Avignon, city of priests; let us add, city of hatreds.
Nowhere better than in convent towns does one learn to hate. The heart
of the child, everywhere else free from wicked passions, was born there
full of paternal hatreds, inherited from father to son for the last
eight hundred years, and after a life of hate, bequeathed in its turn, a
diabolical heritage, to his children.

Therefore, at the first cry of liberty which rang through France the
French town rose full of joy and hope. The moment had come at last for
her to contest aloud that concession made by a young queen, a minor,
in expiation of her sins, of a city and a province, and with it half a
million souls. By what right had she sold these souls in aeternum to the
hardest and most exacting of all masters, the Roman Pontiff?

All France was hastening to assemble in the fraternal embrace of the
Federation at the Champ de Mars. Was she not France? Her sons ejected
delegates to wait upon the legate and request him respectfully to leave
the city, giving him twenty-four hours in which to do so.

During the night the papists amused themselves by hanging from a gibbet
an effigy of straw wearing the tri-color cockade.

The course of the Rhone has been controlled, the Durance canalled, dikes
have been built to restrain the fierce torrents, which, at the melting
of the snows, pour in liquid avalanches from the summits of Mt. Ventoux.
But this terrible flood, this living flood, this human torrent that
rushed leaping through the rapid inclines of the streets of Avignon,
once released, once flooding, not even God Himself has yet sought to
stay it.

At sight of this manikin with the national colors, dancing at the end
of a cord, the French city rose upon its very foundations with terrible
cries of rage. Four papist, suspected of this sacrilege, two marquises,
one burgher, and a workman, were torn from their homes and hung