Chapter III: The Clergy (3)

[Footnote 5362: Abbé Joseph Roux (curé at first of Saint-Silvain, near Tulle, and then in a small town of Corrèze), "Pensées," p. 132 (1886): "There is always something of the pagan in the peasant. He is original sin in all its brutish simplicity."--"The peasant passed from paganism to Christianity mostly through miracles; he would go back at less cost from Christianity to paganism.... It is only lately that a monster exists, the impious peasant.... The rustic, in spite of school-teachers, even in spite of the curés, believes in sorcerers and in sorcery the same as the Gauls and Romans."--Therefore the means employed against him are wholly external. ("Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," by Abbé Lagrange, pastoral notes of Mgr. Dupanloup, I., 64.) "What has proved of most use to you in behalf of religion in your diocese during the last fifteen years? Is it through this--is it through that? No, it is through medals and crosses. Whatever is given to these good people affords them pleasure; they like to have presents of Our Lord and the Blessed Virgin. These objects, with them, stand for religion. A father who comes with his child in his arms to receive the medal will not die without confessing himself."--The reader will find on the clergy and peasantry in the south of France details and pictures taken from life in the novels of Ferdinand Fabre ("L'abbé Tigrane," "les Courbezons," "Lucifer,," "Barnabé," "Mon Oncle Célestin," "Xavière," "Ma Vocation").]

BOOK SIXTH. PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.