e name I do not
feel quite at liberty to mention, but who is certainly regarded by great
numbers of Englishmen as an authority without appeal, not only in regard
to questions of English domestic policy, but in regard to European
affairs in general. In the course of a general conversation--there were
ten or twelve well-known people in the company--this distinguished
public man expressed to me his great surprise at the importance which I
'seemed to attach to the religious sentiment in France.'

I assured him that I not only 'seemed' to attach, but did in fact attach
very serious importance to it, and I ventured to ask him why this should
'surprise' him.

To this he replied textually--for I noted down the remark afterwards
that evening--that he was 'under the impression that the religious
sentiment was dead in France!'

'May I ask,' I replied, 'what can possibly have given you such an
impression as this?'

'Oh, many things,' he answered with great emphasis, 'but particularly a
statement which I saw in a statistical work of much authority, not very
long ago, to the effect that there are in France _five millions of
professed atheists_!'

All who heard this amazing assertion were, I think, as completely taken
aback by it as I was. Courtesy required that I should beg the
distinguished man who made it to give me, if he could, the title of the
work in which he had found it. This he promptly replied that he was at
the moment unable to do. He, however, very nearly asphyxiated a very
quiet and well-bred young Frenchman attached to the French Embassy in
London, who was present, by appealing to him on the subject. 'No, no!'
exclaimed the alarmed _attache_, 'I dare say there is such a book, no
doubt--no doubt--but I have never heard of it.'

I have never been able to find this valuable work. When I do find it I
shall institute a careful inquiry into the reasons which could have led
five millions of French persons, or about one-seventh of the whole
population of France, to take the pains to register themselves as
'atheists.' Presumably they must all have been adults, as the
declaration, on such a subject, of infants, would scarcely, I take it,
be collected, even by M. Jules Ferry, as evidence of the success of his
great scheme for 'laicising' religion out of France.

Meanwhile, I find it set down in the usual statistical authorities
accessible in 1884, that out of the 36,102,021 inhabitants of France,
35,387,703 registered the