'Be the point what it may, he will anathematise you.'
'Then,' answered Lindet, 'alas for religion! At present, the Church has advanced, haltingly, I admit; for that, the like of you are responsible; but it has advanced with the tide that is setting in, and, what is more, it can control and direct that tide, and no other power but the Church can, at the present time, do that. Everything is in flux except the faith, and that will be the rallying-point. We shall, may be, have a republic, but it will be a Christian republic. If the holy father were to throw the apple of discord among us now, if he were to break into two factions the Church of France, by forbidding the faithful to accept our ministrations, then he will unchain the hell-dogs, and roll France in blood. My Lord! it is your own doing that this see has become vacant; it is through no influence exerted by me, that I have been elected your successor. The times are threatening. I shall have to bear on my shoulders the burden of this diocese in a period of extraordinary excitement. I pray you give me your episcopal blessing for the work. If ever you see your way towards accepting the Constitution, I will vacate the see at once. I pray your fatherly blessing.' He bent on one knee.
'No,' said De Narbonne, sulkily; 'my blessing you shall never have. My advice I give you, as you once gave me yours. I warn you that shortly all you constitutional bishops will be anathematised by Rome, all the priests will be ordered, on pain of excommunication, to abstain from acknowledging you, and the faithful will be forbidden to accept the ministrations of bishops and priests who have taken this accursed oath, at the risk of damning their souls eternally.'
'My God!' exclaimed Lindet.
'Yes, such will be the action of the holy see.'
'Then,' said Lindet, vehemently, 'if that be the conduct of the successor of S. Peter, it is high time that his supremacy should be modified into a primacy; lest at some future occasion, relying on powers he has assumed, he use them to wreck the Church. We have just upset the principle of absolute monarchy in the field of politics, we must overthrow the same principle in the domain of religion.'
He turned from the ex-bishop, and entering the palace, shut himself into the library and wrote a letter to the pope, imploring him to use caution, and not, on a point of trifling consequence—the disendowment of the Church—to wreck Christianity in the whirlpool of the Revolution.
It need hardly be said that his letter remained unanswered, and that the prognostications of the ex-bishop were verified.