Father Bailly also left the Oratory to take part in public affairs; but he had more moderate opinions. As a deputy to the Convention from Meaux, he voted against the death of the King; he was one of the Thermidorians, took part in the Eighteenth Brumaire, and became a prefect of the Empire....
If we believe with Taine that the Revolution was entirely an outcome of Cartesianism and of the classic spirit, what a beautiful allegory is this assembly of future Revolutionists in square caps, under the wide branches of Malebranche's chestnut tree!
The Oratory did not survive the Revolution, but Juilly outlived the Oratory.
After 1789, the congregation was divided against itself. Some fathers were willing to take the oath; others refused it. Some of the young associates scorned the authority of the Superior General. The law of August 18, 1792, dissolved the Oratory. But the Oratorists remained at Juilly at the very height of the tumult. One day mobs from Meaux invaded the buildings and pillaged the chapel; even after this, a few priests and a score of pupils again assembled in the college. They left it only during three months in 1793, when a military hospital was installed in place of the school. After the Terror was over, the woman who had acquired Juilly as a national property returned it to its former masters. The college peopled itself anew.
Napoleon dreamed for a time of reestablishing the Oratory and of putting it in charge of all secondary education; Jérôme was brought up at Juilly. But this project was abandoned. But at least, when he reorganized the University, Fontanes was inspired by the rules and the programs of the colleges of the Oratory.
The last Oratorists retired in 1828. Juilly passed under the direction of the Abbés de Scorbiac and de Salinis. Then comes another of the glorious moments of its history. In 1830 and in 1831 Lamennais became the guest of Juilly. Enveloped in his long black quilted coat, following by choice the path at the water's edge—doubtless to rediscover there memories of the pool of La Chesnaie, Lamennais carried back and forth, under the trees of the old park, his passionate dreams. It was here that he meditated his articles for L'Avenir, conceived the plan of the "General Agency for the Defense of Religious Liberty," composed the ardent diatribes in which he claimed independence for the Church, the right of teaching for Catholics, freedom to associate for the monks. It was here that he charmed his friends by the sensitiveness of his heart and frightened them by the boldness of his imagination. It was from Juilly that he returned to Paris to appear with Lacordaire before the Court of Assizes. It was from Juilly that he left for Rome....
Abbé Bautain and Abbé Carl, then Abbé Maricourt, directed Juilly after MM. de Scorbiac and de Salinis, up to the time (1867) when the reconstituted Oratory reentered in possession of the college founded by Father de Condren.
In 1852 a few priests had been united by Father Pétetot, ex-curate of Saint Roch, for the purpose of restoring the congregation dispersed at the time of the Revolution. They had sought and found the traditions of the former Oratory, and slowly "reconstituted in its entirety the pacific and studious city built more than two centuries before by Father de Bérulle." "They could then," said Cardinal Perraud, "place a living model under their eyes in order, to imitate it." The Oratory was thus reborn with the ancient rule which had formerly been its originally—a simple association of lay priests submissive to bishops, it asked of its members neither the vow of obedience nor the vow of poverty. [10] It was natural that it should undertake the direction of Juilly, the most ancient and the most glorious of its houses....
Here I end the rather desultory notes which I have made while visiting Juilly and rummaging through its history. I wish to speak neither of yesterday, nor of today..., nor of tomorrow. I have not attempted to plead for the masters of Juilly, now threatened with again being expelled from their house. I have not the ability to defend them, and besides one cannot plead against a position already taken, or folly, or wickedness.