But not for long.
However eloquently explained and defended within the bare rooms of the Jacobin club, the idea of a limitless and empty void was too repellent to most citizens to be tolerated for more than a couple of weeks. The old Deity no longer satisfied the masses. Why not follow the example of Moses and Mahomet and invent a new one that should suit the demands of the times?
As a result, behold the Goddess of Reason!
Her exact status was to be defined later. In the meantime a comely actress, properly garbed in ancient Greek draperies, would fill the bill perfectly. The lady was found among the dancers of his late Majesty’s corps de ballet and at the proper hour was most solemnly conducted to the high altar of Notre Dame, long since deserted by the loyal followers of an older faith.
As for the blessed Virgin who, during so many centuries, had stood a tender watch over all those who had bared the wounds of their soul before the patient eyes of perfect understanding, she too was gone, hastily hidden by loving hands before she be sent to the limekilns and be turned into mortar. Her place had been taken by a statue of Liberty, the proud product of an amateur sculptor and done rather carelessly in white plaster. But that was not all. Notre Dame had seen other innovations. In the middle of the choir, four columns and a roof indicated a “Temple of Philosophy” which upon state occasions was to serve as a throne for the new dancing divinity. When the poor girl was not holding court and receiving the worship of her trusted followers, the Temple of Philosophy harbored a “Torch of Truth” which to the end of all time was to carry high the burning flame of world enlightenment.
The “end of time” came before another six months.
On the morning of the seventh of May of the year 1794 the French people were officially informed that God had been reëstablished and that the immortality of the soul was once more a recognized article of faith. On the eighth of June, the new Supreme Being (hastily constructed out of the second-hand material left behind by the late Jean Jacques Rousseau) was officially presented to his eager disciples.
Robespierre in a new blue waistcoat delivered the address of welcome. He had reached the highest point of his career. The obscure law clerk from a third rate country town had become the high priest of the Revolution. More than that, a poor demented nun by the name of Catherine Théot, revered by thousands as the true mother of God, had just proclaimed the forthcoming return of the Messiah and she had even revealed his name. It was Maximilian Robespierre; the same Maximilian who in a fantastic uniform of his own designing was proudly dispensing reams of oratory in which he assured God that from now on all would be well with His little world.
And to make doubly sure, two days later he passed a law by which those suspected of treason and heresy (for once more they were held to be the same, as in the good old days of the Inquisition) were deprived of all means of defense, a measure so ably conceived that during the next six weeks more than fourteen hundred people lost their heads beneath the slanting knife of the guillotine.
The rest of his story is only too well known.