while their more pliable or time-serving brethren who accepted the new decree were known as constitutionals.  About 12,000 of the constitutionals married, while some of them applauded the extreme Jacobinical measures of the Terror.  One of them shocked the faithful by celebrating the mysteries, having a bonnet rouge on his head, holding a pike in his hand, while his wife was installed near the altar.[152] Outrages like these were rare:  but they served to discredit the constitutional Church and to throw up in sharper relief the courage with which the orthodox clergy met exile and death for conscience’ sake.  Moreover, the time-serving of the constitutionals was to avail them little:  during the Terror their stipends were unpaid, and the churches were for the most part closed.  After a partial respite in 1795-6, the coup d’etat of Fructidor (1797) again ushered in two years of petty persecutions; but in the early summer of 1799 constitutionals were once more allowed to observe the Christian Sunday, and at the time of Bonaparte’s return from Egypt their services were more frequented than those of the Theophilanthropists on the decadis.  It was evident, then, that the anti-religious furor had burnt itself out, and that France was turning back to her old faith.  Indeed, outside Paris and a few other large towns, public opinion mocked at the new cults, and in the country districts the peasantry clung with deep affection to their old orthodox priests, often following them into the forests to receive their services and forsaking those of their supplanters.

Such, then, was the religious state of France in 1799:  her clergy were rent by a formidable schism; the orthodox priests clung where possible to their parishioners, or lived in destitution abroad; the constitutional priests, though still frowned on by the Directory, were gaining ground at the expense of the Theophilanthropists, whose expiring efforts excited ridicule.  In fine, a nation weary of religious experiments and groping about for some firm anchorage in the midst of the turbid ebb-tide and its numerous backwaters.[153]

Despite the absence of any deep religious belief, Bonaparte felt the need of religion as the bulwark of morality and the cement of society.  During his youth he had experienced the strength of Romanism in Corsica, and during his campaigns in Italy he saw with admiration the zeal of the French orthodox priests who had accepted exile and poverty for conscience’ sake.  To these outcasts he extended more protection than was deemed compatible with correct republicanism; and he received their grateful thanks.  After Brumaire he suppressed the oath previously exacted from the clergy, and replaced it by a promise of fidelity to the constitution.  Many reasons have been assigned for this conduct, but doubtless his imagination was touched by the sight of the majestic hierarchy of Rome, whose spiritual powers still prevailed,