titutional individuals, who have grown devout all on a sudden,
(Toulongeon, i. 262.) they worship or pretend to worship in their
strait-laced contumacious manner; to the scandal of Patriotism.
Dissident Priests, passing along with their sacred wafer for the dying,
seem wishful to be massacred in the streets; wherein Patriotism will not
gratify them. Slighter palm of martyrdom, however, shall not be denied:
martyrdom not of massacre, yet of fustigation. At the refractory places
of worship, Patriot men appear; Patriot women with strong hazel wands,
which they apply. Shut thy eyes, O Reader; see not this misery, peculiar
to these later times,--of martyrdom without sincerity, with only cant
and contumacy! A dead Catholic Church is not allowed to lie dead; no,
it is galvanised into the detestablest death-life; whereat Humanity, we
say, shuts its eyes. For the Patriot women take their hazel wands, and
fustigate, amid laughter of bystanders, with alacrity: broad bottom of
Priests; alas, Nuns too reversed, and cotillons retrousses! The
National Guard does what it can: Municipality 'invokes the Principles
of Toleration;' grants Dissident worshippers the Church of the Theatins;
promising protection. But it is to no purpose: at the door of that
Theatins Church, appears a Placard, and suspended atop, like Plebeian
Consular fasces,--a Bundle of Rods! The Principles of Toleration must
do the best they may: but no Dissident man shall worship contumaciously;
there is a Plebiscitum to that effect; which, though unspoken, is like
the laws of the Medes and Persians. Dissident contumacious Priests
ought not to be harboured, even in private, by any man: the Club of the
Cordeliers openly denounces Majesty himself as doing it. (Newspapers of
April and June, 1791 (in Hist. Parl. ix. 449; x, 217).)

Many things invite to flight: but probably this thing above all others,
that it has become impossible! On the 15th of April, notice is given
that his Majesty, who has suffered much from catarrh lately, will enjoy
the Spring weather, for a few days, at Saint-Cloud. Out at Saint-Cloud?
Wishing to celebrate his Easter, his Paques, or Pasch, there; with
refractory Anti-Constitutional Dissidents?--Wishing rather to make off
for Compiegne, and thence to the Frontiers? As were, in good sooth,
perhaps feasible, or would once have been; nothing but some two
chasseurs attending you; chasseurs easily corrupted! It is a pleasant
possibility, execute it or not. M