rather, the clerical assembly, which gives it its popularity." The more
irreligious a licentious book is the more it is prized; when it cannot
be printed it is copied in manuscript. Colle counts "perhaps two
thousand manuscript copies of' La Pucelle 'by Voltaire, scattered about
Paris in one month." The magistrates themselves burn it only for form's
sake. "It must not be supposed that the hangman is allowed to burn the
books whose titles figure in the decree of the Court. Messieurs would be
loath to deprive their libraries of the copy of those works which fall
to them by right, and make the registrar supply its place with a few
poor records of chicanery of which there is no scanty provision."[4220]

But, as the century advances, unbelief, less noisy, becomes more solid.
It invigorates itself at the fountain-head; the women themselves begin
to be infatuated with the sciences. In 1782,[4221] one of Mme. de
Genlis's characters writes,

Five years ago I left them thinking only of their attire and the
preparation of their suppers; I now find them all scientific and witty."
We find in the study of a fashionable woman, alongside of a small altar
dedicated to Benevolence or Friendship, a dictionary of natural history
and treatises on physics and chemistry. A woman no longer has herself
painted as a goddess on a cloud but in a laboratory, seated amidst
squares and telescopes[4222]. The Marquise de Nesle, the Comtesse
de Brancas, the Comtesse de Pons, the Marquise de Polignac, are
with Rouelle when he undertakes to melt and volatilize the diamond.
Associations of twenty or twenty-five persons are formed in the
drawing-rooms to attend lectures either on physics, applied chemistry,
mineralogy or on botany. Fashionable women at the public meetings of
the Academy of Inscriptions applaud dissertations on the bull Apis, and
reports on the Egyptian, Phoenician and Greek languages. Finally,
in 1786, they succeed in opening the doors of the College de France.
Nothing deters them. Many of them use the lancet and even the scalpel;
the Marquise de Voyer attends at dissections, and the young Comtesse de
Coigny dissects with her own hands. The current infidelity finds fresh
support on this foundation, which is that of the prevailing philosophy.
Towards the end of the century[4223] "we see young persons who have
been in society six or seven years openly pluming themselves on their
irreligion, thinking that impiety makes up for wit, and that t