from other hands, and at last the news
arrived that Paul Bert was dead. The French premier announced the fact
from the Tribune in a broken voice and amid profound silence. "The
Chamber loses in him," said M. de Freycinet, "one of its eminent
members, science an illustrious representative, France one of her
most devoted children." The next day the Chamber, by an overwhelming
majority, voted a State funeral and a pension of L400 a year to Mdme.
Bert, with reversion to her children. The first vote was strenuously
opposed by Monseigneur Freppel, Bishop of Angers, on the ground that
the deceased was an inveterate enemy of religion, but the bishop was
ignominiously defeated by 379 votes against 45. That is probably a fair
test of the relative strength of Freethought and Christianity among
educated men in France.

Monseigneur Freppel was right Paul Bert was an inveterate enemy of
religion. He was a militant Atheist, who believed that the highest
service you can render to mankind is to free them from superstition. No
wonder the Church hated him. At a famous banquet he proposed the toast,
"The eradication of the two phylloxeras--the phylloxera of the vine
and the phylloxera of the Church." His handbook on the Morality of
the Jesuits was a frightful exposure of the duplicity and rascality of
priestcraft. About twelve months before Grambetta's death, that great
statesman took the chair at one of Paul Bert's atheistical lectures. It
was a bold thing to do, but Gambetta was a bold man. The great statesman
did a bolder thing still when he took office. He scandalised the
Christian world by appointing his atheistic friend Paul Bert as Minister
of Public Instruction and Public Worship. Surely this was a piece
of irony worthy the assiduous student of Rabelais and Voltaire.
"Clericalism is the enemy," said Gambetta. Paul Bert accepted the
battle-cry, but he did not content himself with shouting. He labored to
place education on a basis which would make it a citadel of Freethought.
The Tory _Standard_ allows that he "laid the bases of military education
in the schools and _lycees_" that he "first dispensed the pupils in
State educational establishments from the obligation of attending
any religious service, or belonging to any class in which religious
instruction was given," and that he first organised the higher education
of girls.

Paul Bert was a typical Frenchman and an illustrious Atheist. What do
the clergy make of this phenomenon?