Chapter M: LANTAIGNE: “Do not jest and do not deny. Coming along the

roads sounded the white horses that were bringing the king to his own again. Henri Dieudonné was coming to re-establish the principle of authority from which spring the two social forces: command and obedience; he was coming to restore human order along with divine order, political wisdom along with the religious spirit, the hierarchy, law, discipline, true liberty and unity. The nation, linking up its traditions once more, was recovering, along with the sense of its mission, the secret of its power and the pledge of victory. … God willed it not. These great designs, thwarted by the enemy who still hated us after having satisfied his hatred, opposed by a great number of the French, miserably supported even by those who had formed them, were brought to naught in one day. The frontier of our country was barricaded against Henri Dieudonné, and the people subsided into a Republic; that is to say, they repudiated their birthright, they renounced their rights and their duties, in order to govern themselves according to their own inclinations and to live at their ease in that liberty which God curbs and which overturns both law and order, the temporal images of Himself. Henceforth evil was king and proclaimed its edicts. The Church, exposed to incessant vexations, was perfidiously tempted on the one side to an impossible renunciation and on the other to revolt involving punishment.”

M. BERGERET: “You doubtless reckon among the vexatious measures the expulsion of the fraternities?”