of the great part they had
to perform. One thought was the guardian of their lives--a thought
which they repressed, but which did not the less sustain them in
delicate trials: it was this, "In them resided the Church."

Their great experience of the world and domestic life, their tact and
skilful management of men and things, far from weakening morality, as
one might believe, rather defended it in them, enabling them to
perceive, and have a presentiment of perils, to see the enemy coming,
not to allow him the advantage of unexpected attacks; or, at least, to
know how to elude him.

We have seen how Bossuet stopped the soft confidence of a weak nun at
the very first word. The little we have said of Fenelon's _direction_
shows sufficiently how the dangerous director evaded the dangers.

Those eminently spiritual persons could keep up for years between
heaven and earth this tender dialectic of the love of God. But is it
the same in these days with men who have no wings, who crawl and cannot
fly? Incapable of those ingenious turnings and windings by which
passion went on sportively, and eluding itself, do they not run the
risk of stumbling at the first step?

I know well that this absence of early education, and vulgarity or
clownishness, may often put an insurmountable barrier between priests
and well-bred women. Many things, however, that would not be tolerated
in another man are reckoned in them as merits. Stiffness is austerity,
and awkwardness is accounted the simplicity of a saint, who has ever
lived in a desert. They are measured by a different and more indulgent
rule than the laity. The priest takes advantage of everything that is
calculated to make him be considered as a man apart, of his dress, his
position, his mysterious church, that invests the most vulgar with a
poetical gleam.

Who gave them this last advantage? Ourselves. We, who have
reinstated, rebuilt, as one may say, those very churches they had
disregarded. The priests were building up their Saint-Sulpices, and
other heaps of stones, when the laity retrieved Notre-Dame and Saint
Ouen. We pointed out to them the Christian spirit of these living
stones,[1] but they did not see it; we taught it them, but they could
not understand. And how long did the misconception last? Not less
than forty years, ever since the appearance of the _Genie de
Christianisme_. The priests would not believe us, when we explained to
them this sublime edifice