“Fifty thousand priests repeat the same words on the day appointed by their chiefs, and the people—who after all provide soldiers—will be more touched by the voices of its priests than by all the versifying in the whole world.” (This personality provoked some murmurs.)
“The clergy has a genius superior to yours,” went on the cardinal raising his voice. “All the progress that has been made towards this essential point of having an armed party in France has been made by us.” At this juncture facts were introduced. “Who used eighty thousand rifles in Vendée?” etc., etc.
“So long as the clergy is without its forests it is helpless. At the first war the minister of finance will write to his agents that there is no money to be had except for the curé. At bottom France does not believe, and she loves war. Whoever gives her war will be doubly popular, for making war is, to use a vulgar phrase, the same as starving the Jesuits; making war means delivering those monsters of pride—the men of France—from the menace of foreign intervention.”
The cardinal had a favourable hearing. “M. de Nerval,” he said, “will have to leave the ministry, his name irritates and to no purpose.”
At these words everybody got up and talked at the same time. “I will be sent away again,” thought Julien, but the sapient president himself had forgotten both the presence and existence of Julien.
All eyes were turned upon a man whom Julien recognised. It was M. de Nerval, the prime minister, whom he had seen at M. the duc de Retz’s ball.
The disorder was at its height, as the papers say when they talk of the Chamber. At the end of a long quarter of an hour a little quiet was established.
Then M. de Nerval got up and said in an apostolic tone and a singular voice:
“I will not go so far as to say that I do not set great store on being a minister.
“It has been demonstrated to me, gentlemen, that my name will double the forces of the Jacobins by making many moderates divide against us. I should therefore be willing to retire; but the ways of the Lord are only visible to a small number; but,” he added, looking fixedly at the cardinal, “I have a mission. Heaven has said: ‘You will either loose your head on the scaffold or you will re-establish the monarchy of France and reduce the Chambers to the condition of the parliament of Louis XV.,’ and that, gentlemen, I shall do.”