ng deposited her in front of the president,"
Chaumette, the spokesman of the procession, "harangued the Assembly....
He proceeded to demand that the ci-devant metropolitan church should
henceforth be the temple of Reason and Liberty; which proposition was
immediately adopted. The 'goddess' was then conducted to the president,
and he and other officers of the House saluted her with the 'fraternal
kiss,' amid thunders of applause. After this, upon the motion of
Thuriot, the Convention in a body joined the mass of the people, and
marched in their company to the temple of Reason, to witness a
repetition of the impieties above described.... At St. Gervais a ball
was given in the chapel of the Virgin. In other churches theatrical
spectacles took place.... On Sunday, the 17th of November, all the
parish churches of Paris were closed by authority, with three
exceptions.... Religion was proscribed, churches closed, Christian
ordinances interdicted; the dreary gloom of atheistical despotism
overspread the land."--Jervis, "The Gallican Church and the Revolution,"
quoted in Larned's "History for Ready Reference," p. 1300. The next
year, however, Robespierre had a decree passed of which the first
article was: "The French people acknowledge the existence of the Supreme
Being and the immortality of the soul;" and thereupon the inscriptions
_To Reason_ that had been placed upon the French churches were replaced
by others reading _To the Supreme Being_.

50--*calm and bright*. After the downfall of Robespierre in 1794
France gradually worked back to a less hysterical mood. In October 1795
a new form of government known as the Directory was established, under
which the people enjoyed comparative safety at home and developed a
remarkable military efficiency against their foreign enemies.
Bonaparte's military genius brought him rapidly to the front in the wars
of the Directory. It was he that created the Cisalpine and Ligurine
"republics," and his policy directed the invasions of Rome and of
Switzerland.

53, 66--*Helvetia*. In March, 1798, after having fostered or
compelled the formation of republics under French protection in Holland,
northern Italy, and Rome, the Directory, under pretence of defending the
republican rights of the Vaudois, made a concerted attack upon
Switzerland. Berne, the centre of resistance, was taken, despite the
heroic defence of the mountaineers who for five centuries had maintained
in "bleak Helvetia's icy cav