spirit prevailing in the province.  In cities and the more enlightened districts the constitutional worship was exercised almost without dispute.  In the open country and the less civilised departments, the priest who had not taken the oath became a consecrated tribune, who at the foot of the altar, or in the elevation of the pulpit, agitated the people and inspired it, in all the horror of a constitutional and schismatic priesthood, with hatred of the government which protected it.  This was not actually persecution or civil war, but the sure prelude to both.

The king had signed with repugnance and even constraint the civil constitution of the clergy:  but he had done so only as king, and reserving to himself his liberty and the faith of his conscience.  He was Christian and Catholic in all the simplicity of the Gospel, and in all the humility of obedience to the church.  The reproaches he had received from Rome for having ratified by his weakness the schism in France, wounded his conscience and distracted his mind.  He had never ceased to negotiate officially or secretly with the pope, in order to obtain from the head of the church either an indulgent concession to the necessities of religion in France, or prudent temporising.  It was on these terms only that he could restore peace to his mind.  Inexorable Rome had only granted him its pity.  Fulminating bulls were in circulation by the hands of nonjuring priests, cast at the heads of the population, and only stopping at the foot of the throne.  The king trembled, to see them burst one day on his own head.

On the other hand, he felt that the nation, of which he was the legitimate head, would never forgive him for sacrificing it to his religious scruples.  Placed thus between the menaces of Heaven and the threats of his own people, he procrastinated with all his might the denunciations of Rome and the votes of the Assembly.  The Constitutional Assembly understood this anxiety of the king’s feelings and the dangers of persecution.  It had given time to the king, and displayed forbearance to men’s consciences:  it had not intermeddled with the faith of the simple believer, but left each at liberty to pray with the priest of his choice.  The king had been the first to avail himself of this liberty, and had not thrown open the chapel of the Tuileries to the constitutional worship.  The choice of his confessor sufficiently indicated the choice of his conscience.  The man in him protested against the political necessities which oppressed the monarch.  The Girondists wished to compel him to declare himself.  If he yielded to them, he infringed upon his dignity; if he resisted, he lost the remaining shreds of his popularity.  To compel him to decide was a great point for the Girondists.