'That is to say,' I asked, 'the law officer of the department? Why should he be brought into the business?'
'Why, indeed,' replied my friend. 'You must ask M. Ferry or M. Clémenceau. He can stir up the Academic Inspector to make some objection to the opening of the free school, if the Academic Inspector does not find and make an objection himself. If no objections are made within a month the school may be opened. If objections are made they must be made before the Council of the Department within a month. If the Council support the objections, the teacher must appeal from the decision to the Academic Inspector within ten days, and the Inspector must submit this appeal to the Superior Council of Public Instruction at the next ensuing session of that body. Now the Superior Council only meets twice a year, and as the appeal, according to the law, is only required to be heard "with the least possible delay," you will see that nothing can be easier than for the Academic Inspector and the Procureur between them to keep a decision in the air for months, or for a year, or even longer, and pending the appeal the school cannot be opened.
'As for the departmental councils, which are first to consider the objections made to the opening of the school, they no longer include, as they did under the Empire, representatives of the Catholic clergy, the Protestant sects, and the Israelites. All of these are struck out of the councils by this law of 1886, though fully ninety-nine hundredths of all the taxes paid to support the machinery, not only of public education but of the State, are paid by the Catholics, Protestants, and Israelites. Nor are the councils any longer allowed to elect their own vice-presidents. The prefect, a government employé, presides over the councils. The Academic Inspector, another government employé, is officially the president; four councillors-general, elected by the whole body of the council-general of the department, sit on the Departments of Primary Instruction Council, as do also the director or directors of the Normal Schools of Public Teachers, and four teachers, two male and two female, to be elected by the whole body of lay public school teachers of both sexes in the department, all of them paid employés of the Government; and finally, two inspectors of public primary education nominated by the Minister of Public Instruction. So, as you see, out of a council consisting of fourteen members, ten are paid servants of the Government, directly concerned to discourage the development of the Christian schools. If questions and disputes between the lay public schools and the free Christian schools came before this council, one lay and one congreganist teacher may be admitted to join the council. But the wise and just provision of the earlier law, that two or more magistrates of the highest repute should be members of these councils, has been deliberately struck out of this aggressive law of 1886.
'Is it possible,' he said, 'to mistake either the spirit or the object of such a law?
'What gives me confidence and hope is the unquestionable effect which the law has had upon the religious life of France. It has aroused and stimulated it to more vigour and energy than I have seen it show for years past. If only the Church in France were to-day as free from any official connection with the State as it is in your country, I believe we should see such a revival of Catholic faith as has not been known in Europe for centuries.
'Do you remember,' he went on, 'how Ferry went to Rome after his expulsion from power? Yes? And doubtless you know what efforts he made there at that time to bring about a subterranean understanding between himself and the Vatican?'
'He is the only one of these Opportunists who really has a head on his shoulders, and you will find that he is under no illusions as to the possibility of any working alliance between the Opportunists and the Radicals which can save the former from going to the wall, like the Girondins in 1793.
'Perhaps,' he said, laughingly, 'we may live to see M. Ferry doing penance in a white sheet, with a candle in his hand, on the way to a seat in a monarchical Cabinet! Though I am no politician, yet—mark my words!—this republic has been so mismanaged that now it cannot live without the Radicals—and it cannot live with them!
'As for the Church; if you want to see what life and energy it is showing in its work, come and see me in the autumn. I will show you in the Limousin one of the establishments of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, or you can go into Mayenne and see twelve or fifteen of them. Or you ought to go to Ruille-sur-la-Loire, to see the modest cradle of this great congregation, which now, from its mother-house at Neuilly, is sending out Catholic life and faith all over the world, and the pulse of which is beating higher in France to-day than at any time since that true and simple servant of God, Dujarié, took it upon himself, from his obscure little parsonage, to begin the restoration of the Church from the crash of the Terror and the calamities of the First Empire.'
'How many years ago was it,' I asked, 'when this Congregation began its work in the United States?'