"In the greater part of the families of the Republican bourgeoisie and of the Socialist proletariat, the young girls are neither clericals nor free-thinkers … They have a disdain for bigotry and a horror of intolerance.… They would not accept for their children a systematised and stifling education; they desire that they should remain in contact with all modern life. They are not then clericals. But with the exception of a very small number, all of them, workers or middle classes, they have remained attached by a part at least of their thoughts and of their hearts to the Christian faith, to the Catholic tradition. They have not said 'No' to religious belief. They have not created for themselves by science and philosophy another conception of the universe; they have not, outside Christianity, the whole support for the moral life.… That is the state of mind of a great many Catholic women in France. They are not at the mercy of the watchwords of the Church. But no more have they freed themselves from its dogmas.
"Well, I imagine that one of us, of the middle class or the workers, may have married ten years ago, fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, a young girl thus brought up.… Let us suppose that at the moment when he was married he was not engaged in political and social warfare, or that he belonged to one of those moderate and middle parties who accept compromises in
