Part 11 (1/2)

'”The figure of our Saviour Christ, set up there in very special circ.u.mstances, and with a solemn ceremony in which more than 30,000 spectators took part, was clandestinely thrown down and taken away the night before last. It is impossible for me to imagine that the authorities can have ordered such a thing to be done.

'”I must request you, Mr. Prefect, to order an inquiry to be made into this inexplicable affair, and to cause the authors of the act to be prosecuted according to law. Please accept the a.s.surance of my respectful regard.

'”[Ill.u.s.tration] AIME VICTOR-FRANCIS, '”Bishop of Amiens.”

'To this letter, written by the highest ecclesiastical authority of the chief city of his prefecture--will you believe it?--M. Spuller, who is after all not a perfectly illiterate person like Pet.i.t, actually made no reply!

'But the cotton-velvet bagman of blasphemy three days afterwards, reading in the papers the letter of Bishop Guilbert, burst into print with this incredible but most instructive effusion, addressed to his friend the Prefect:

'”Amiens: Nov. 15, 1880.

'”Mr. Prefect,--I find this morning in the journals of the bishopric the text of a letter addressed to you by the Bishop of Amiens in regard to the suppression of the Catholic emblem placed at the entrance of the general cemetery of the Madeleine.

'”It was by my order, and my written order, that the Christ of the Madeleine was removed. The only failure to comply with my orders was that the operation was performed in the evening after the cemetery was closed, instead of in the morning as I had directed.

In acting thus, I have shown great tolerance; for, in virtue of Article 13 of the Law of the 7th Vendemiaire of the Year IV., circ.u.mscribed in its application, but not abrogated by the Law of the 18th Germinal year X., as is shown by a ministerial decree of the 7th Fructidor following: 'No sign special to any religion can be raised, fixed, and attached in any place whatever, so as to strike the eyes of citizens, except in an enclosure intended for the exercises of this religion, or in the interior of private houses, in the studios or warehouses of artists or merchants, or in public edifices destined to contain monuments of the arts.”'

'Then followed a dozen pages of similar twaddle, meant to show that the mayor of Amiens was a most tolerant prince, in that he had not ordered the destruction of every cross set up on a private grave!

'Of course all these laws of the First Republic were long ago shot into s.p.a.ce under the Consulate and the Empire, and of course, even if they had not been shot into s.p.a.ce, a consecrated cemetery is an ”enclosure intended for the exercises of religion.” But what did that signify to M.

Pet.i.t, who, in a public speech the year after, boasted that he ”had not been married in church, and that his children had never been baptized.”

'Did all this give the man any right to destroy and carry away a costly piece of artistic work, the property of the city?'

Obviously, it is as absurd to expect peace and order in France under a republic in which men like M. Pet.i.t, and M. Spuller, and M. Dauphin, and M. Goblet are leading friends of the Government, as it would have been to expect peace and order in the England of the seventeenth century, when churchwardens--as at Banbury, for example--went about breaking at night into the churches confided to their care, and smas.h.i.+ng the statues of the saints and defacing the glorious monuments of the past.

After considering all these humours and graces of the most recent French Republic, as set forth by the senatorial mayor of Amiens, for the edification of Picardy and France, it was interesting to walk with Mr.

Ruskin from the Place de Perigord up the 'Street of the Three Pebbles,'

past the theatre and the Palais de Justice, to the south transept of that glorious cathedral which has not as yet been taken down by night, under the senatorial mayor or his friends the ministers, M. Spuller and M. Yves Guyot. Why should this 'Parthenon of Gothic architecture,' as M.

Viollet-le-Duc calls it, be left standing when the Calvary of the poor at Amiens is cast down and sawn in pieces?

For surely Mr. Ruskin, who has written many true and eloquent things, has written nothing truer than these words with which he brings to a close his remarkable paper called the 'Bible of Amiens':--

'The life and gospel and power of Christianity are all written in the mighty works of its true believers, in Normandy and Sicily, on river-islets of France and in the river glens of England, on the rocks of Orvieto and by the sands of Arno. But of all, the simplest, completest, and most authoritative in its lessons to the active mind of Northern Europe, is this on the foundation-stones of Amiens. Believe it or not as you will--only understand how thoroughly it was once believed--and that all beautiful things were made and all brave deeds done in the strength of it--until what we may call ”this present time,” in which it is gravely asked whether religion has any effect on morals, by persons (senatorial and other) who have essentially no idea whatever of the meaning of either religion or morality.'

CHAPTER VI.

IN THE SOMME--_continued_

AMIENS

Where party names are taken from persons, there we may be sure that the people are either losing, or have never had, the political instincts which alone can make popular government a government of law and order.

The Englishmen who are readiest to proclaim themselves 'Gladstonians,'

whatever may be their other merits, are hardly perhaps the most devoted champions either of the British const.i.tution as it is, or of strictly const.i.tutional reform. In France to-day, the Republican party is made up of clans, each taking the name of its chief. There are Ferryists and Clementists, as there were Gambettists; and the Government of the day is putting forth all its strength to check the drift over of what I suppose I may without impropriety call the Republican residuum into Boulangism.

Here in Amiens the tide seems to be too strong for the authorities at Paris, and for that matter throughout the department of the Somme. At the election nearly a year ago, on August 19, 1888, of a deputy to fill the vacancy caused by the death of a Royalist member, M. de Berly, General Boulanger came forward as a candidate and was elected by an overwhelming majority. There are 160,400 electors in the department. Of these, 121,955 voted. General Boulanger received 76,094 votes, and his Republican compet.i.tor, M. Barnot, only 41,371, General Boulanger having been elected at the same time for the Nord and the Charente-Inferieure.

General Boulanger resigned his seat and his Republican followers cast their votes for a Royalist, General de Montauban, who was elected. In the arrondiss.e.m.e.nt of Amiens, with 57,527 registered voters, General Boulanger had a majority, in 1888, of 15,274 voters, the whole vote thrown there being 42,609. Yet, in 1881, on a total registration of 47,923 voters, the Republican candidates for Amiens, M. Goblet and M.

Dieu, were elected by a combined majority of 7,094 votes. If the Boulangists carry Amiens, therefore, at the legislative election this year, it may be taken for granted, I think, that M. Goblet and his friend the senatorial mayor have not educated their fellow-citizens into very staunch and trustworthy supporters of the Republic.