But for the moment,—a few seconds only,—Paris looked round her mighty self, and thought things over!
The man-eating tiger for the space of a sigh licked his powerful jaws and pondered!
Something new!—something wonderful!
We have had a new Constitution, a new Justice, new Laws, a new Almanack!
What next?
Why, obviously!—How comes it that great, intellectual, aesthetic Paris never thought of such a wonderful thing before?
A new religion!
Christianity is old and obsolete, priests are aristocrats, wealthy oppressors of the People, the Church but another form of wanton tyranny.
Let us by all means have a new religion.
Already something has been done to destroy the old! To destroy! always to destroy! Churches have been ransacked, altars spoliated, tombs desecrated, priests and curates murdered; but that is not enough.