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CHAPTER VII.
THE ARCHBISHOP
On this gloomy and tragical day an idea struck one of the people.
He was a workman belonging to the honest but almost imperceptible
minority of Catholic Democrats. The double exaltation of his mind,
revolutionary on one side, mystical on the other, caused him to be
somewhat distrusted by the people, even by his comrades and his friends.
Sufficiently devout to be called a Jesuit by the Socialists,
sufficiently Republican to be called a Red by the Reactionists, he
formed an exception in the workshops of the Faubourg. Now, what is
needed in these supreme crises to seize and govern the masses are men
of exceptional genius, not men of exceptional opinion. There is no
revolutionary originality. In order to be something, in the time of
regeneration and in the days of social combat, one must bathe fully in
those powerful homogeneous mediums which are called parties. Great
currents of men follow great currents of ideas, and the true
revolutionary leader is he who knows how best to drive the former in
accordance with the latter.
Now the Gospel is in accordance with the Revolution, but Catholicism is
not. This is due to the fact that in the main the Papacy is not in
accordance with the Gospel. One can easily understand a Christian
Republican, one cannot understand a Catholic Democrat. It is a
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