I admit that they neither follow the calling nor possess the virtues of the priesthood; but I maintain that they have the ideas, the interests, the passions of the ecclesiastical caste.

They aim at the Cardinal's hat, when their ambition does not soar to the tiara.

Singular laymen, truly, and well fitted to inspire confidence in a lay people! 'Twere better they should become Cardinals; for then they would no longer have their fortunes to make, and they would not be called upon to signalize their zeal against the nation.
For that is, unhappily, the state at which things have arrived.

This same ecclesiastical caste, so strongly united by the bonds of a learned hierarchy, reigns as over a conquered country.

It regards the middle class,--in other words, the intelligent and laborious part of the nation,--as an irreconcilable foe.