was that which he now propounded. The clergy had been popular, for a
day, in 1789; but the National Assembly refused to declare that the
country was Catholic. In June 1792 the Jacobin Club rejected a
proposal to abolish the State-Church, and to erect Franklin and
Rousseau in the niches occupied by Saints, and in December a member
speaking against divine worship met with no support. On May 30, 1793,
during the crisis of the Gironde, the procession of Corpus Christi
moved unmolested through the streets of Paris; and on August 25,
Robespierre presiding, the Convention expressly repudiated a petition
to suppress preaching in the name of Almighty God.

On September 20, Romme brought the new calendar before the Assembly,
at a moment when, he said, equality reigned in heaven as well as on
earth. It was adopted on November 24, with the sonorous nomenclature
devised by Fabre d'Eglantine. It signified the substitution of Science
for Christianity. Winemonth and fruitmonth were not more unchristian
than Julius and Augustus, or than Venus and Saturn; but the practical
result was the abolition of Sundays and festivals, and the supremacy
of reason over history, of the astronomer over the priest. The
calendar was so completely a weapon of offence, that nobody cared
about the absurdity of names which were inapplicable to other
latitudes, and unintelligible at Isle de France or Pondicherry. While
the Convention wavered, moving sometimes in one direction and then
retracing its steps, the Commune advanced resolutely, for Chaumette
was encouraged by the advantage acquired by his friends in September
and October. He thought the time now come to close the churches, and
to institute new forms of secularised worship. Supported by a German
more enthusiastic than himself, Anacharsis Cloots, he persuaded the
bishop of Paris that his Church was doomed like that of the Nonjurors,
that the faithful had no faith in it, that the country had given it
up. Chaumette was able to add that the Commune wanted to get rid of
him. Gobel yielded. On November 7, he appeared, with some of his
clergy, at the bar of the Convention, and resigned to the people what
he had received from the people. Other priests and bishops followed,
and it appeared that some were men who had gone about with masks on
their faces, and were glad to renounce beliefs which they did not
share. Sieyes declared what everybody knew, that he neither believed
the doctrines nor practised the rites