Things reached such a pitch that speakers actually began to excuse themselves when they were obliged to address the Assembly on church matters. François de Nantes (as spokesman of a committee, be it noted) declares: "Our one consolation in being obliged to take up your time with the discussion of church matters is the hope that the measures you will take will prevent the necessity of your ever hearing of them again." His whole speech is a tissue of audacities.
These sentiments were shared by high and low. One of Louis XVI.'s ministers, the insolent, high-handed Cahier de Gerville, said one day, on leaving the council chamber, to his colleague Molleville, who noted down the expression in his Memoirs: "I wish I had these damned vermin, the clergy of all lands, between my fingers, that I might squeeze them all to death at once." But the spirit of the Revolution found temperate, dignified expression in a letter from the Republic to the Pope, which a woman had been commissioned to write. It is addressed to "The Prince-Bishop in Rome." In the name of the Republic Madame Roland writes: "High-priest of the Roman church, sovereign of a state which is slipping out of your hands, know that the only possible way in which you can preserve state and church is by making a disinterested confession and proclamation of those gospel principles which breathe a spirit of the purest democracy, the tenderest humanity, and the most perfect equality--principles with which Christ's representatives have adorned themselves only for the purpose of supporting and increasing a sovereign power which is now falling to pieces from decrepitude. The age of ignorance is past."
But such language as this is quite out of keeping with what was generally spoken and written. The period of calm conviction was at an end, that of unbridled passions had begun. The passions followed in the track of the convictions. Hatred of Catholicism reached its climax; it broke out in one great flame all over France. Those were the golden days of the Clubs.