A cadaverous
and infected literature which had no form but that of ugliness, began to
sprinkle with fetid blood all the monsters of nature.
Who will dare to recount what was passing in the colleges? Men doubted
everything: the young men denied everything. The poets sung of despair;
the youth came from the schools with serene brow, their faces glowing
with health and blasphemy in their mouths. Moreover, the French
character, being by nature gay and open, readily assimilated English and
German ideas; but hearts too light to struggle and to suffer withered
like crushed flowers. Thus the principle of death descended slowly and
without shock from the head to the bowels. Instead of having the
enthusiasm of evil we had only the negation of the good; instead of
despair, insensibility. Children of fifteen seated listlessly under
flowering shrubs, conversed for pastime on subjects which would have made
shudder with terror the motionless groves of Versailles. The Communion of
Christ, the host, those wafers that stand as the eternal symbol of divine
love, were used to seal letters; the children spit upon the bread of God.
Happy they who escaped those times! Happy they who passed over the abyss
while looking up to Heaven. There are such, doubtless, and they will pity
us.
It is unfortunately true that there is in blasphemy a certain discharge
of power which solaces the burdened heart.
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