Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/154

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he has shaken off its vice-like grasp of his individuality, never carry him. Here you understand, as no melodramatic stories of Sue or Dumas could make you understand, the shuddering intensity of moral hold; the implacable, mild pursuit; the potency and success of the Jesuits all the world over. It is a mistake to associate this self-rooted dislike of the Jesuits with bigoted Protestantism or blatant atheism. Read the exquisite stories of Ferdinand Fabre, studies by a sincere Catholic of Catholic life, which bear upon the underhand persecution of excellent, well-meaning country priests by what are called the Congregationalists, the Black Army, the Jesuits chiefly. Read that delightful study of Cévennes life under the Restoration, Jacquou le Croquant, by Eugene Le Roy, and see how a good French Catholic, who loves and reveres the saintly village curate, can loathe his enemies, the Jesuits. Here, too, as in Ferdinand Fabre's Mon Oncle Celestin, a beautiful soul, a kind of early Christian,—who lives only to do good around him, whose life is one long lesson of love, of sacrifice, and abnegation,—is hounded out of the priesthood, falsely accused, horribly slandered, and excommunicated; and all by the secret manœuvres of the Jesuits, because he accepted the Republic, deeming it more the priest's duty to concern himself with the private interests and sorrows and trials of his flock than to dabble in