is curious discovery originated
in the malice of Fouche, or whether Talleyrand took this method of duping
his rival, and at the same time of gratifying his own malignity. Certain
it is that Fouche was severely reprimanded for the transaction, and that
Bonaparte was highly offended at the disclosure.

The common people, and the middle classes, are neither so ostentatiously
devout, nor so basely perverse. They go to church as to the play, to
gape at others, or to be stared at themselves; to pass the time, and to
admire the show; and they do not conceal that such is the object of their
attendance. Their indifference about futurity equals their ignorance of
religious duties. Our revolutionary charlatans have as much brutalized
their understanding as corrupted their hearts. They heard the Grand Mass
said by the Pope with the same feelings as they formerly heard
Robespierre proclaim himself a high priest of a Supreme Being; and they
looked at the Imperial processions with the same insensibility as they
once saw the daily caravans of victims passing for execution.

Even in Bonaparte's own guard, and among the officers of his household
troops, several examples of rigour were necessary before they would go to
any place of worship, or suffer in their corps any almoners; but now,
after being drilled into a belief of Christianity, they march to the Mass
as to a parade or to a review. With any other people, Bonaparte would
not so easily have changed in two years the customs of twelve, and forced
military men to kneel before priests, whom they but the other day were
encouraged to hunt and massacre like wild beasts.

On the day of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin, a company of gendarmes
d'Elite, headed by their officers, received publicly, and by orders, the
sacrament; when the Abbe Frelaud approached Lieutenant Ledoux, he fell
into convulsions, and was carried into the sacristy. After being a
little recovered, he looked round him, as if afraid that some one would
injure him, and said to the Grand Vicar Clauset, who inquired the cause
of his accident and terror: "Good God! that man who gave me, on the 2d of
September, 1792, in the convent of the Carenes, the five wounds from
which I still suffer, is now an officer, and was about to receive the
sacrament from my hands." When this occurrence was reported to
Bonaparte, Ledoux was dismissed; but Abbe Frelaud was transported, and
the Grand Vicar Clauset sent to the Temple, for th