Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/88

 But if no historian can take these exaggerations seriously, neither can he accept the disclaimers of the interested party. The truth being that the clergy and the Jesuits interfered enormously, and their pretensions were at times intolerable.

What seems to have roused to the utmost the national discontent was the part that the King took in the religious ceremonies. Louis XVIII. had been more or less sceptical, not to say Voltairian, in his views ; Charles X. saw fit to follow the processions from one end of his capital to the other, and Yillèle admits, in his Mémoires, that the Parisians were much pained by this spectacle of their sovereign " walking in humility behind the priests. " What was odd, this quarrel was with the priests rather than the King. The unpopularity of the Jesuits became such that the name of Jesuit served as a handy weapon of abuse among the lowest classes and even the Bourgeoisie. An enraged man could fling no more opprobrious epithet at his neighbour.

Curious to relate, the same hand that so devoutly held the sacred candle, signed, at the proposal of Martignac, and without very many scruples of its own, the famous Ordinances of »