plucks it
down, before the children, and throws it out of the door. I simply state
what has happened over and over again! Is there any respect for equal
rights--for the rule of the majority, for freedom of conscience in such
proceedings? Take the case of the Virgin of Beziers. In that ancient
city stood two statues of the Virgin, one in bronze and one in marble.
The civil authorities called upon the Church to suppress them. The
Church authorities of course declined to do this. Thereupon the civil
authorities take the money of the taxpayers and expend it in depriving
the city of these two monuments. Suppose the Turkish authorities were to
do a thing like this in a town full of Christians under their dominion,
what would all the civilised world say about the Turks?

'And it is done in a French city by Frenchmen either to carry out their
own self-will or to exasperate and insult their fellow-citizens, or for
both reasons at once!

'Still another case you can see for yourself at Domremy. There under a
pious and patriotic foundation to which Louis XVIII largely contributed
the home of Jeanne d'Arc, religiously preserved in its original state,
was confided to the keeping of some Sisters. They dwelt in a neat
edifice constructed on the grounds purchased to secure the house of the
Pucelle, and there the children of Domremy and the neighbouring communes
came to school and were gratuitously taught. Only the other day the
local authorities were instigated, I know not by whom--perhaps by the
friends of M. Ferry at St.-Die, which is not very far off--to "laicize"
instruction in Domremy. To this end they turn the Sisters out, put the
home of Jeanne d'Arc under the charge of a lay guardian, who has to be
paid by the State, of course, tax the commune to pay a lay teacher, and
make the school a lay school at the very door of the home of the
village maiden to whose religious faith France owes her freedom and her
national existence!'

I made a visit to Nancy and the Department of the Meurthe et Moselle not
long after I had this conversation in Reims. The Mother Superior of the
great Sisterhood of Christian Doctrine at Nancy confirmed this amazing
story of the performances at Domremy, and gave me many particulars of
the petty persecutions to which the Sisters who conduct schools all over
France are subjected. The schools are open at all hours to the invasion
of Inspectors, who magnify their office too often in the eyes of the
children b