r, laughingly proclaiming in his thunderous voice,
"Look here, you rascal, I trust that to you I shall always be Monsieur
le Comte!"--This shows to what extent new theories are admitted into an
aristocratic brain. They occupy the whole of the upper story, and there,
with a pleasing murmur, they weave the web of interminable conversation;
their buzzing lasts throughout the century; never have the drawing-rooms
seen such an outpouring of fine sentences and of fine words. Something
of all this drops from the upper to the lower story, if only as dust,
I mean to say, hope, faith in the future, belief in Reason, a love of
truth, the generous and youthful good intentions, the enthusiasm that
quickly passes but which may, for a while, become self-abnegation and
devotion.

IV. Unbelief.

The diffusion among the upper class.--Progress of
incredulity in religion.--Its causes.--It breaks out under
the Regency.--Increasing irritation against the clergy.--
Materialism in the drawing-room.--Estimate of the sciences.--
Final opinion on religion.--Skepticism of the higher clergy.

Let us follow the progress of philosophy in the upper class. Religion is
the first to receive the severest attacks. The small group of skeptics,
which is hardly perceptible under Louis XIV, has obtained its recruits
in the dark; in 1698 the Palatine, the mother of the Regent, writes
that "we scarcely meet a young man now who is not ambitious of being
an atheist."[4215] Under the Regency, unbelief comes out into open
daylight. "I doubt," says this lady again, in 1722, "if; in all Paris,
a hundred individuals can be found, either ecclesiastics or laymen, who
have any true faith, or even believe in our Lord. It makes one tremble.
. . ." The position of an ecclesiastic in society is already difficult.
He is looked upon, apparently, as either a puppet or a dickey (a false
shirt front)[4216]. "The moment we appear," says one of them, "we are
forced into discussion; we are called upon to prove, for example, the
utility of prayer to an unbeliever in God, and the necessity of fasting
to a man who has all his life denied the immortality of the soul; the
effort is very irksome, while those who laugh are not on our side." It
is not long before the continued scandal of confession tickets and the
stubbornness of the bishops in not allowing ecclesiastical property
to be taxed, excites opinion against the clergy, and, as a matter of
course, a