In other words, the former draws everybody away from the latter, while the latter sends the gendarmes against the former, and persecution begins .-- In a strange reversal, it is the majority which undergoes persecution, and the minority which carries it out.

The mass of the constitutional cure is, everywhere, deserted.[2279] In La Vendee there are ten or twelve present in the church out of five or six hundred parishioners; on Sundays and holidays whole villages and market-towns travel from one to two leagues off to attend the orthodox mass, the villagers declaring that "if the old cure can only be restored to them, they will gladly pay a double tax." In Alsace, "nine tenths, at least, of the Catholics refuse to recognize the legally sworn priests." The same spectacle presents itself in Franche-Comte, Artois, and in ten of the other provinces .-- Finally, as in a chemical composition, the analysis is complete.

Those who believe, or who recover their belief, are ranged around the old cure; all who, through conviction or tradition, hold to the sacraments, all who, through faith or habit, wish or feel a need to attend the mass.

The auditors of the new cure consist of unbelievers, deists, the indifferent members of the clubs and of the administration, who resort to the church as to the Hotel-de-ville or to a popular meeting, not through religious but through political zeal, and who support the "intruder" in order to sustain the Constitution.

All this does not secure to him very fervent followers, but it provides him with very zealous defenders; and, in default of the faith which they do not possess, they give the force which is at their disposal.