gling the condition
of religious beliefs in the time of Symmachus or of Ambrose?

A fervent Christian, Rene d'Esparvieu was deeply attached to the liberal
ideas his ancestors had transmitted to him as a sacred heritage.
Compelled to oppose a Jacobin and atheistical Republic, he still called
himself Republican. And it was in the name of liberty that he demanded
the independence and sovereignty of the Church.

During the long debates on the Separation and the quarrels over the
Inventories, the synods of the bishops and the assemblies of the
faithful were held in his house. While the most authoritatively
accredited leaders of the Catholic party: prelates, generals, senators,
deputies, journalists, were met together in the big green drawing-room,
and every soul present turned towards Rome with a tender submission or
enforced obedience; while Monsieur d'Esparvieu, his elbow on the marble
chimney-piece, opposed civil law to canon law, and protested eloquently
against the spoliation of the Church of France, two faces of other days,
immobile and speechless, looked down on the modern crowd; on the right
of the fire-place, painted by David, was Romain Bussart, a
working-farmer at Esparvieu in shirt-sleeves and drill trousers, with a
rough-and-ready air not untouched with cunning. He had good reason to
smile: the worthy man laid the foundation of the family fortunes when he
bought Church lands. On the left, painted by Gerard in full-dress
bedizened with orders, was the peasant's son, Baron Emile Bussart
d'Esparvieu, prefect under the Empire, Keeper of the Great Seal under
Charles X, who died in 1837, churchwarden of his parish, with couplets
from _La Pucelle_ on his lips.

Rene d'Esparvieu married in 1888 Marie-Antoinette Coupelle, daughter of
Baron Coupelle, ironmaster at Blainville (Haute Loire). Madame Rene
d'Esparvieu had been president since 1903 of the Society of Christian
Mothers. These perfect spouses, having married off their eldest daughter
in 1908, had three children still at home--a girl and two boys.

Leon, the younger, aged seven, had a room next to his mother and his
sister Berthe. Maurice, the elder, lived in a little pavilion comprising
two rooms at the bottom of the garden. The young man thus gained a
freedom which enabled him to endure family life. He was rather
good-looking, smart without too much pretence, and the faint smile which
merely raised one corner of his mouth did not lack charm.

At twenty-five