Page:Book of the Riviera.djvu/160

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124
THE RIVIERA

bishop in his room. This was the best possible medicine for Projectus. He tumbled out of bed, pulled on his clothes, and in a screaming rage wrote a letter to the Pope. Thereupon Leo wrote sharply to Hilary to bid him mind his own business in future, and not meddle out of his diocese. And then the Pope wrung from the feeble Emperor Valentinian an edict denouncing the contumacy of Hilary against the apostolic throne, and requiring him and all the bishops of Gaul to submit as docile children to the bishop of the Eternal City. Hilary died in 449, comparatively young.

Sieyès was born at Fréjus in 1748, and was trained for orders at S. Sulpice. In 1788 he was sent as member for the clerical order to the Provincial Assembly at Orléans. He saw what was the trend of opinion and what must inevitably happen, and he wrote his trenchant pamphlets, Essai sur les Privilèges and Qu'est-ce que le tiers-état, 1789, that acted as firebrands through France. He was elected by Paris as representative at the General Assembly that met at Versailles. There, looking at the nobles in their sumptuous attire, the curés in their soutannes) and the representatives of the Third Estate in their humble cloth, he said, "One people!—We are three nations," and he it was who, on July 2Oth, on entering the Assembly, exclaimed, "It is time now to cut the cords," and sent an imperious message to the other two Houses to enter and sit along with the Tiers État.

He strove hard against the abolition of tithe without some compensation to the clergy, but was overborne. The general feeling was against this. As he saw that anarchy was resulting from the conduct of the Assembly he withdrew from taking any further active part; but