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T H E S AC R E D PROJ E C T OF A M E R IC A N SOC IOL O G Y
 TH E SACR ED PROJECT
OF A M ER ICA N SOCIOLOGY

Christian Smith

1
 1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smith, Christian, 1960–
The sacred project of American sociology / Christian Smith.
p. cm. — (Philosophische analyse = Philosophical analysis)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–937713–8 (hardcover : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978–0–19–937714–5 (ebook) — ISBN 978–0–19–937716–9 (online content)
1. Religion and sociology—United States. 2. United States—Religion. I. Title.
BL60.S565 2014
306.60973—dc23
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Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

 For sociologists more committed
to the best possible understandings and explanations of
the truth about social life—whatever they may be—
than to making social life conform to their
predetermined ideological commitments.
 “We despise all reverences and all the objects of reverence
which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things.
And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other
people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.”
Mark Twain, Following the Equator
 CON TEN TS

Introductionix

1. The Argument 1
2. Evidence 28
3. Spiritual Practices 115
4. How Did We Get Here?—The Short Story 119
5. Consequences 133
6. The Question of Accountability 177
7. What Is Sociology Good For? 184
8. Conclusion 189

Appendix: The Alternative of Critical Realist Personalism 199

Index205

vii
 I N TRODUCTION

Sociology as an academic discipline appears on the surface to be a

secular, scientific enterprise. Its founding fathers were mostly athe-
ists. Its basic operating premises are secular and naturalistic. And
its disciplinary culture is indifferent and sometimes hostile to re-
ligion, often for what are thought of as rationalistic and scientific
reasons. American sociology’s early historical professionalization
also involved the intentional marginalization of Christian Social-
Gospel activists who wanted to claim a place in the newly forming
scientific discipline.1 Sociologists today are disproportionately not
religious, compared to all Americans, and often irreligious people. 2
And a great deal of sociology is devoted to showing that the ordi-
nary world of everyday life as it seems to most people is not really

1. Christian Smith, 2003, The Secular Revolution: Power, Interest, and Conflict in the Secular-
ization of American Public Life, Berkeley: University of Califorina Press, pp. 97–159.
2. Elaine Howard Ecklund and Christopher Scheitle, 2007, “Religion among Academic
Scientists: Distinctions, Disciplines, and Demographics,” Social Problems, 54(2): 289–
307; Martin Trow and Associates, 1969, Carnegie Commission National Survey of Higher
Education: Faculty Study, Berkeley: University of California at Berkeley, Survey Re-
search Center; Martin Trow and Associates, 1984, Carnegie Commission National Survey
of Higher Education: Faculty Study, Berkeley: University of California at Berkeley, Survey
Research Center.

ix
 INTRODUCTION

what is going on—in short, to debunking appearances. 3 Thus, for

example, ordinary people’s naïve experiences of religious faith and
sacred practice ought not to be taken seriously on their own terms,
but are better understood through the sociological reinterpreta-
tions of their scientific meanings and causes, in terms of concepts
like resource exchanges, status struggles, coping mechanisms,
gender inequalities, class interests, social control, etc.
My purpose here is to show that, to the contrary, the secular en-
terprise that everyday sociology appears to be pursuing is actually
not what is really going on at sociology’s deepest level. Contempo-
rary American sociology is, rightly understood, actually a pro-
foundly sacred project at heart. Sociology today is in fact animated
by sacred impulses, driven by sacred commitments, and serves a
sacred project. We might even say that American sociology’s project
is “spiritual,” as long as we understand the full breadth and depth
of what “spiritual” in this case means. By conducting this self-­
reflexive, tables-turning, cultural and institutional sociology of the
profession of American sociology itself, I show in what follows that
this allegedly secular discipline ironically expresses Emile Dur-
kheim’s inescapable sacred, exemplifies its own versions of Marxist
false consciousness, and generates a spirited reaction against Max
Weber’s melancholically observed disenchantment of the world.4

3. Peter Berger, 1963, Invitation to Sociology, New York: Anchor, p. 38.

4. In one way, then, this book can be read as “a sociology-of-religion of sociology-the-­
discipline,” since this book studies a sacred movement, although in this case a secular
sacred movement. Secularity and secularism are areas in which sociologists of religion
have increasingly focused in recent years, “the secular” becoming more properly under-
stood as not a neutral, default human position or category, but instead a contingently
situated, particular stance and type, the exigencies of which are worth empirical investi-
gation. See, for example, Craig Calhoun, Mark Jurgensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwer-
pen, 2011, Rethinking Secularism, New York: Oxford University Press; Phil Zuckerman,
2009, Atheism and Secularity, New York: Praeger; Talal Asad, 2003, Formations of the Sec-
ular, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press; Courtney Bend and Ann Taves, 2012, What
Matters?: Ethnographies of Value in a Not So Secular Age, New York: Columbia University
Press.

x
 INTRODUCTION

American sociology, in short, does not escape the analytic net that
it casts over the rest of the ordinary world. Sociology itself is a part
of that very human, very social, often very sacred and spiritual
world. I write, therefore, to help American sociology break the mag-
ical spells that it has cast on itself using incantations conjuring the
misrecognition of its own deepest impulses, in order to prompt an
honest reckoning with the profoundly sacred nature of its project.

xi
 C ha pt e r 1

The Argument

I begin my case by defining the basic terms of my argument, then

stating the argument itself, and finally exploring some important
qualifications and implications.

DEFINING TER MS

My argument does not turn on a tricky play on words. I mean ex-

actly what my terms ordinarily suggest. By “sacred,” I mean things
set apart from the profane and forbidden to be violated, exactly what
the sociologist Emile Durkheim meant by the term.1 Sacred matters
are never ordinary, mundane, or instrumental. They are reverenced,
venerated, and defended as sacrosanct by the social groups that hold
them as sacred. Sacred things are set apart from all that is common
and profane, as if they were holy. Sacred objects are hallowed, re-
vered, and honored as beyond questioning or disrespect. They
can never be defiled, defied, or desecrated by any infringement or

1. Durkheim, 1995 [1912], The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, New York: Free Press.

1
 TH E SACR ED PROJECT OF A M ER ICA N SOCIOLOGY

denigration. Things sacred thus have particular powers to motivate

and direct human action on their behalf and for their protection.
This is exactly the character of the dominant project of American
sociology.
I have also said that sociology’s project might be considered
spiritual, when that term is properly understood, and so I will also
use that word in what follows in addition to “sacred.” By “spiri-
tual,” I mean that dimension of human life that concerns the most
profound, meaningful, and transcendent visions of human exis-
tence, feeling, and desires. Spiritual matters as I mean that here
concern beliefs, longings, and experiences—both conscious and
unconscious—­about the greatest and highest good, truth, right-
ness, value, vitality, meaning, and beauty. Such irrepressible con-
cerns of the “human spirit” speak and respond to what is most
worth living for, what purposes merit our devotion, what goods are
to be most prized, what ends are worth dedicating ourselves to re-
alize. These concerns and commitments are about life dedication,
submission, and steadfastness. Spiritual matters contrast with the
more mundane, material, and instrumental affairs of life. Human
spiritual questions transcend interests of mere survival or subsis-
tence or routine. They focus the mind, will, and emotions on higher
visions, deeper meanings, and more profound aspirations in life.
Things “spiritual” of this nature have a quality that transcends in-
strumental, means–ends rationality. They sustain and guide people
with visions drawn from the deepest wellsprings of their lives, what
some call the depths of the human “heart,” in ways that actually
pre-rationally and a-rationally govern, rather than are governed by,
preferences, rationality, and calculated choices.
This is the sense in which I say that American sociology is
driven and governed by not only a sacred but also a spiritual project.
To be clear, my use of “spiritual” is here decidedly anthropocentric,
resting its meaning not on belief in the metaphysical existence of

2
 T he A rgument

ghosts, but instead on the experience and motivating force of “the

human spirit.” In this usage, “spiritual” need not be concerned with
the supernatural, God, gods, spooks, etcetera, or necessarily have
anything directly to do with religion. This is just as the contempo-
rary phrase, “I am spiritual but not religious,” suggests. Things spiri-
tual may and often do connect to religion, but they do not have to. 2
People and movements can be devoted to “spiritual” (and sacred)
causes that are not substantively religious. 3 One can be both spiri-
tual in this sense and secular. Many sociologists in fact are exactly
that, as I aim to show below, as is the discipline of American so-
ciology collectively. At the same time, a sociological view compels
us to see that certain factors—sociology’s place in western and
American history, and the common American historical and con-
temporary interaction of human spiritual concerns (as I define that
above) with religious traditions—mean that sociology’s spiritual
project is indeed in some ways structurally and culturally related
to religion, even if it itself is not directly religious in any usual sense
of that concept.
What about my other terms? By “project” I mean a complex,
purposive endeavor requiring concerted effort sustained over time
to mobilize, coordinate, and deploy resources of different kinds to
achieve a desired but challenging goal. Projects can range from

2. See, for example, Nancy T. Ammerman, 2013, “Spiritual But Not Religious?: Beyond
Binary Choices in the Study of Religion,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 52:
258–278.
3. In this sense, I mean “spiritual” similarly to how Jerry Muller describes Georg Lukác
and Hans Freyer as “spiritual guides” on the left (of the Communist Party) and the right
(the state, following Hegel), respectively, in mid-twentieth century Europe—both in-
tellectuals were secular, yet wrote about “transnational, transethnic, universal commu-
nity,” the “yearning for an intense emotional commitment to a community of purpose,”
and “the experience of subordination to a higher, collective purpose,” the realization of
which intellectuals were to play the crucial role in promoting—and in that sense they
were spiritual visionaries and leaders. Muller, 2002, The Mind and the Market: Capital-
ism in Western Thought, New York: Anchor Books, pp. 274–278.

3
 TH E SACR ED PROJECT OF A M ER ICA N SOCIOLOGY

building a deck off one’s house’s back step to fomenting a politi-

cal revolution to establish a social utopia. American sociology is
engaged in “a project,” I am saying, one that is deeply sacred in
nature.
By “sociology,” I mean the professionalized academic discipline
located in the social sciences of most colleges and universities in
American higher education, organized in the form of departments
that offer academic degrees for undergraduate majors and some-
times through master’s and doctoral programs, whose faculty are
expected to teach, research, and publish scholarship. My story may
apply to sociology as conducted outside of the United States too—I
do not know enough to say for sure. But I do know American sociol-
ogy quite well enough to make my case here, and so will focus on it.4
What I describe here about sociology is obviously also embedded
in the intellectual and moral culture of American higher education
and elite, knowledge-class culture more broadly, though I spend
little time here exploring that larger context. Also, importantly, by
speaking of “sociology” as a whole, I am not claiming that each and
every American sociologist is committed to the spiritual project I
describe below. Many are, but some are not. Yet some individual so-
ciologists do not matter here, since, as sociologists well know, the
collective power of dominant institutionalized sociocultural systems is
much more important than this or that individual commitment and
possible dissent in particular cases. Many American sociologists
are definitely and actively committed to sociology’s sacred proj-
ect, some are more passively so, and some are not at all. In the end,

4. Other disciplines in the academy also have their own projects, many of which may also
be sacred, but addressing them is beyond my purpose here. But see, for example, Robert
Nelson, 2002, Economics as Religion: From Samuelson to Chicago and Beyond, State Col-
lege, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press; Robert Nelson, 2009, The New Holy Wars:
Economic Religion Versus Environmental Religion in Contemporary America, State College,
PA: Pennsylvania State University Press; Paul Vitz, 1995, Psychology as Religion: The
Cult of Self-Worship, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

4
 T he A rgument

that all still adds up to American sociology as a collective enterprise

being and having a sacred project. 5
Crucial to my argument is this fact: the sacred and spiritual
nature of American sociology’s project is not commonly, if ever,
acknowledged for what it is. Sociology misrecognizes its very own
project. How instead does sociology typically think of itself? What
self-images might American sociology actually recognize? Some
sociologists think of the discipline as the “science of society.” So-
ciology studies human social life using “the scientific method,”
just like other sciences study particular aspects of the natural
world and universe. Other sociologists who are less comfortable
with the idea of sociology being “scientific” think of the discipline
more generally as “the study of social groups, institutions, and
structures.” These are the kinds of self-descriptions found in most
sociology survey textbooks. Officially, the American Sociological
Association (ASA) offers a characteristically inclusive6 approach,
taking multiple stabs of self-understanding in its definition of the
discipline:

Sociology is: the study of society; a social science involving

the study of the social lives of people, groups, and societies;
the study of our behavior as social beings, covering everything
from the analysis of short contacts between anonymous indi-
viduals on the street to the study of global social processes;
the scientific study of social aggregations, the entities through

5. I write that sociology both is and has a sacred project. Both are true. Insofar as enough
American sociologists collectively possess (have) and pursue this sacred project with
such devotion, American sociology has actually become that sacred project, such that
it is now impossible to think about the very nature and purpose of American sociology
apart from its defining sacred and spiritual project—that endeavor has come to consti-
tute what American sociology itself at heart is.
6. Inclusion—not leaving anyone out, and so possibly feeling bad—itself being a cen-
tral value in sociology’s spiritual project, even if, in the end, in the case of ASA’s self-­
definition, it comes at the cost of conceptual cogency.

5
 TH E SACR ED PROJECT OF A M ER ICA N SOCIOLOGY

which humans move throughout their lives; an overarching

unification of all studies of humankind, including history, psy-
chology, and economics.7

Sociology, by this account, is a “study” (mentioned twice) and a

“science” (ditto) focused for its subject matter on society; the lives
of people, groups, and societies; human behavior; social aggrega-
tions; and all of humankind—this discipline is also said to provide
the all-encompassing synthetic integration of all other disciplines
concerning humans and their knowledge about humanity.8 Some
of this may be right. But note that none of it admits to advancing
a sacred project. In fact, it all sounds quite general, abstract, and
neutral—almost antiseptic. That is in part because this definition
of what sociology is focuses exclusively, if vaguely, on what sociol-
ogy does, not, more tellingly, on the purposes or ends for doing what
it does. We find no “in order to” clauses in this definition. Accord-
ing to the ASA, then, American sociology is an activity of scientific
study, with no particular (stated) purpose or goal in view—at least
not one that defines the discipline or can be publicly stated.
I propose, by contrast, that American sociology definitely does
have an “in order to” project, one that is sacred.9 But, if so, then why
do not ASA or sociology survey textbooks say so? Two reasons. First,
sociology’s spiritual project is so ubiquitous and taken for granted
in the discipline that it has become invisible to most sociologists
themselves. So deeply is this sacred project lodged in the soul of

7. http://www.asanet.org/about/sociology.cfm (accessed September 24, 2013).

8. Just don’t try to tell that last bit to economists, psychologists, and historians—or anthro-
pologists or political scientists.
9. I intentionally use the language of sociology as a collective actor in this paper (e.g., “so-
ciology is committed . . .”) as a writing convenience. I recognize that human persons are
the real actors, ultimately. My following of this convention, however, always involves the
qualification noted above, that not all individual sociologists are committed to the dis-
cipline’s spiritual project. Readers who are not hard-core methodological individualists
should have no problem with this style of discourse.

6
 T he A rgument

American sociology, and so obvious is its appeal, that ordinary so-

ciologists find it impossible to make it the independent object of ex-
plicit observation and analysis. It is central to sociology’s orthodoxy
and habitus, and so goes unnoticed. Second, publicly naming and
overtly embracing this sacred and spiritual project would threaten
the scientific authority and scholarly legitimacy of academic soci-
ology on which the project itself depends for success. Keeping the
sacred project misrecognized, implicit, and unexamined provides
an escape hatch of “plausible deniability” that is politically neces-
sary. This of course requires that sociologists carefully exempt their
own discipline from their otherwise searching sociological gaze.
But, since sociologists are all too humans, that is entirely doable.

THE PROJECT

What actually is the sacred project of American sociology, then? We

might start by saying that sociology is about something like expos-
ing, protesting, and ending through social movements, state regulations,
and government programs all human inequality, oppression, exploita-
tion, suffering, injustice, poverty, discrimination, exclusion, hierarchy,
constraint and domination by, of, and over other humans (and perhaps
animals and the environment). This would be accurate. But this for-
mulation does not go deep enough to uncover the more basic and
determining assumptions about philosophical anthropology and
normative goods that sociology’s sacred project presupposes. If we
want to really understand sociology well, we need to dig harder.
Sociology’s deeper sacred project is more fully and accurately de-
scribed as follows. American sociology as a collective enterprise is
at heart committed to the visionary project of realizing the eman-
cipation, equality, and moral affirmation of all human beings as au-
tonomous, self-directing, individual agents (who should be) out to live

7
 TH E SACR ED PROJECT OF A M ER ICA N SOCIOLOGY

their lives as they personally so desire, by constructing their own favored

identities, entering and exiting relationships as they choose, and equally
enjoying the gratification of experiential, material, and bodily plea-
sures. That is the deeper vision that undergirds and justifies the first
description about ending oppression, etcetera. It provides the more
positive, constructive account for why all of those bad things need
to be exposed, protested, and ended. Without this Durkheimian
sacred project powerfully animating the soul of American sociol-
ogy, the discipline would be a far smaller, drabber, less significant
endeavor—perhaps it would not even have survived as an academic
venture to this day.
American sociology’s sacred project does not embody one single
ideology or program. It is rather an unstable amalgam of variously
accumulated historical and contemporary ideas and movements.
At its core stands western, liberal individualism in the tradition of
John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. That is framed by
the larger inheritance of the western (so-called) Enlightenment, re-
ceived in its more skeptical and rationalist modes, in the tradition of
Emmanuel Kant (“Dare to think for oneself ”10), Voltaire (“La nôtre
[religion] est sans contredit la plus ridicule, la plus absurde, et la plus
sanguinaire qui ait jamais infecté le monde”11), and Auguste Comte
(the founder of positivism, of the discipline of “Sociology” as the
“Queen of the Sciences,” and of a new, non-theistic “Religion of Hu-
manity” emphasizing altruistic service).12

10. Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, transl. and ed. Mary J. Gregor, 1996, New York:
Cambridge University Press, pp. 15–22.
11. Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great, 1927, transl. Richard Aldington, New York:
Brentano’s.
12. Henry May, 1978, The Enlightenment in America, New York: Oxford University Press;
Gertrude Himmelfarb, 2005, The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American
Enlightenments, New York: Vintage; Smith, 2003, p. 54. One dictionary of sociology
also refers to the discipline in similar terms, though without direct reference to Comte:
“sociology is sometimes seen (at least by sociologists) as a queen of the social sciences,

8
 T he A rgument

But American sociology’s sacred project is not simply about

bourgeois Enlightenment liberalism. It is also formed by other
powerful intellectual, cultural, and political movements. One is
the Marxist tradition, central to the discipline’s theoretical canon,
which provides sociology an analytically lambasting, teleologically
revolutionary, and socially utopian edge that is centrally concerned
with establishing equality of material production and consump-
tion among humans (at least those who survive the revolution).
Another influence is the progressive social reform movement of early-
twentieth-century urban America, in the tradition of Jane Addams,
Lillian Wald, and Margaret Sanger, along with Social Gospel activ-
ists like Richard Ely and Walter Rauschenbusch—the primordial
soup out of which American sociology as a professional discipline
evolved—that identified, publicized, and sought through ratio-
nal and philanthropic social amelioration to correct many social
ills.13 A somewhat related influence on American sociology’s spiri-
tual project is American pragmatism, of the John Dewey variety,
which disavows metaphysics, takes liberal democracy (or whatever
else a community happens to desire) for granted, and focuses on
the piecemeal solving of immediate, practical problems, however
people define them. Another influence on American sociology’s
spiritual project is a therapeutic outlook and culture—focused on
individual subjective happiness, good feeling, and affirmation—­
received from the Freudian tradition of psychodynamics as medi-
ated through twentieth-century psychoanalysis, pop psychology,

bringing together and extending the knowledge and insights of all the other (concep-
tually more restricted) adjacent disciplines.” Gordon Marshall, 1998, A Dictionary of
Sociology, 2nd ed., New York, Oxford University Press, p. 630.
13. Cecil Greek, 1992, The Religious Roots of American Sociology, New York: Garland;
Dorothy Ross, 1991, The Origins of American Social Science, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. See Christopher Lasch, 1991, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and
Its Critics, New York: Norton; Ellen Fitzpatrick, 1994, Endless Crusade: Women Social
Scientists and Progressive Reform, New York: Oxford University Press.

9
 TH E SACR ED PROJECT OF A M ER ICA N SOCIOLOGY

and advertisement-driven mass-consumer capitalism.14 Still an-

other formative influence on sociology’s spiritual project is the
sexual revolution of the 1960s and after, which has defined sexuality
as a crucially determinative aspect of human personhood, identity,
and agency, worthy of unbounded enjoyment and requiring politi-
cal activism to protect and defend.
Added to these are the strong influences of the black civil rights
movement of the 1950s and 60s and the third-wave feminism of
the 1960s and 70s. More recently (1980s to the present), the cul-
tural and political movement for gay-lesbian-bisexual-transsexual-
(gender/sexual)questioning (GLBTQ ) rights has exerted a massive
impact on American sociology’s spiritual project, viewed as natu-
rally following the two previous influences of black civil rights and
feminism. In more theoretical terms, the spiritual project of Ameri-
can sociology is also profoundly shaped by social constructionism, an
outlook born in Kantian philosophy, bolstered by early Anthropol-
ogy’s arguments about cultural relativism, encouraged by a particu-
lar (mis)reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and finally
codified by sociology’s very own Peter Berger and Thomas Luck-
mann (although Berger himself repudiated the “constructivist”
movement that subsequently developed).15 The pervasive influence
of social constructionism as a defining worldview within sociology,
even among the many who do not “do” the “social construction of
social problems,” cannot be underestimated. Finally, poststructur-
alism and postmodernism have exerted more diffuse but not insig-
nificant influences on sociology’s spiritual project. Most American
sociologists are not disciples of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida,

14. Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud, New York:
Harper and Row; Jonathan Imber, ed., 2004, Therapeutic Culture, New Brunswick:
Transaction.
15. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, 1967, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise
in the Sociology of Knowledge, New York: Anchor Cite.

10
 T he A rgument

and Stanley Fish (as many in the humanities have been), but some
of the sensibilities of poststructuralism and postmodernism—a
detached skepticism about human subjectivity, authorial intent,
disinterested knowledge, legitimate uses of power, and western
humanism—­have nevertheless diffused in sectors of American so-
ciology in ways that shape its project.
If we had to characterize American sociology’s sacred proj-
ect in brief, therefore, we might say that it stands in the modern
liberal-Enlightenment-Marxist-social-reformist-pragmatist-therapeutic-
sexually liberated-civil rights-feminist-GLBTQ-social constructionist-
poststructuralist/postmodernist “tradition.” That odd conglomera-
tion, I suggest, conveys much of the lineage, interest, and energy
propelling the spiritual project of American sociology. Again, it
does not matter that this or that particular important sociologist
is or is not aware of or does or does not believe in or endorse all of
the elements of or influences on this spiritual project. What mat-
ters is that it in fact animates, though not necessarily consciously
and explicitly, the working beliefs and activities of many if not most
American sociologists, especially those who are most vocal and ac-
tivist, and so has come to define the presupposed, default, “obvious”
purpose, culture, and institutional orientation of the discipline. In
fact, the more that the features of this sacred project are simply as-
sumed, tacit, and unnoticed by its adherents, the more powerfully
they can and do operate among sociologists.
I should say here that I personally do not view this sacred proj-
ect as all bad or all good; in my view, it is a mix of both. But my per-
sonal view on that is not what matters most here. I am interested in
writing neither a diatribe against nor a manifesto championing this
sacred project. My purpose is more simply to name and describe
it for what it is and to critically consider some of its larger ramifi-
cations. It is less important how sociology’s sacred project does or
does not match my own personal standards and sensibilities. What

11
 TH E SACR ED PROJECT OF A M ER ICA N SOCIOLOGY

matters is helping readers to see and acknowledge its reality and

influences, and to consider their larger implications and conse-
quences for sociology and beyond.
That said, let me unpack American sociology’s dominant sacred
project a bit more. This project is, first, intent to realize an end. It is
going somewhere. It is fundamentally teleological, oriented toward
a final goal. It is not about defending or conserving a received in-
heritance, but unsettling the status quo. The project is fundamen-
tally transformational, reformist, sometimes revolutionary. It is
about “changing the world” to “make the world a better place.” The
change that sociology’s sacred project seeks to effect is also dra-
matic. The problems of the social world are so big and deep in this
view that mere remedial tinkering or prudent meliorism is inade-
quate. Change needs to be systemic, institutional, and sometimes
radical—in the etymological sense of “going to the root” of things.16
So when the new world envisioned by this spiritual project is finally
realized, it will be very different from the present world.
And how will this be accomplished? Through various means, but
central among them in sociology’s spiritual imagination are popu-
lar progressive social movements and social-democratic state pro-
grams and regulations.17 “The people” (on the left, not the middle
and definitely not the right) must demand justice and equality, and
then the state must guarantee and accomplish justice and equality

16. Etymologically, “radical,” late fourteenth century, from Late Latin radicalis, “of or
having roots,” from Latin radix, “root.”
17. For one explicit statement about the need to unite sociology and progressive activism,
see the chapters on “Scholarship that Might Matter,” “Crossing Boundaries in Partici-
patory Action Research: Performing Protest with Drag Queens,” “Building Bridges,
Building Leaders: Theory, Action, and Lived Experience,” “Knowing What’s Wrong
is Not Enough: Creating Vision and Strategy,” among others, in David Croteau, Wil-
liam Hoynes, and Charlotte Ryan, Rhyming Hope and History: Activists, Academics,
and Social Movement Scholarship (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005),
which explicitly seeks to promote “partnerships among scholars and activists” for
“meaningful collaboration” (back cover).

12
 T he A rgument

“structurally” through progressive programs and policies. The

market, wealthy elites, charitable foundations, moral leaders, and
religious organizations are not to be trusted to achieve the goods
that sociology prizes—most of those, in fact, are often viewed as
sources of the world’s current problems. In general, the wealth of
capitalists needs to be redistributed, and the world would be a better
place if it were much more secular. So, in the end, most ordinary
people cannot be trusted (because they do not “get it”), nor can es-
tablished institutions and their leaders be trusted. So those who do
“get it”—who have a “sociological imagination”—must (somehow)
compel the state to socially structure equality, freedom, and justice
for all, especially those against whom mainstream society would
discriminate.
Emancipation thus also centrally defines sociology’s sacred proj-
ect. People need to be set free from everything external that op-
presses, constrains, and dehumanizes them, whether that takes the
form of ignorance, racism, poverty, patriarchy, heterosexism, or any
other discrimination or obstruction, perhaps including the insti-
tutions of marriage and religion. Thus the archetypically modern
devotion to freedom, to liberté, is generalized in this project. A key
substantive commitment in sociology’s sacred project is also equal-
ity. Nobody is any better or more valuable or important than anyone
else. Everyone deserves an equal opportunity for—and probably
even an equal outcome in—enjoying material goods and social re-
spect. Significant privileges, status distinctions, and categories of
discrimination are therefore bads to be targeted for destruction.
To the more traditional western commitments to freedom and
equality, sociology’s sacred project also adds the centrality of moral
affirmation. In some ways, this is contemporary American society’s
version of the French Revolution’s ideal of fraternité. It is not, for this
project, enough simply to set people free from oppression and to
treat them as equals. Everyone also deserves to be morally affirmed

13
 TH E SACR ED PROJECT OF A M ER ICA N SOCIOLOGY

by everyone else in their society. Justice and equity are not suffi-
cient: it is necessary to ensure the kind of social and moral approval,
validation, appreciation, and approbation that people are believed
to need to feel good about themselves. Unacceptable, therefore, is
any form of real or symbolic lack of acceptance, exclusion, or moral
judgment against another. Every identity and lifestyle must be not
only tolerated but positively validated, affirmed, and included.
The focal concern of sociology’s sacred project is the welfare of
human beings. Many sociologists are also concerned about the wel-
fare of the natural environment and animals. However, with some
exceptions, it is about the rights and well-being of humanity that
this sacred project is most concerned—but humanity understood in
a very particular way. A highly specific philosophical anthropology is at
work here. First, human beings are believed to be (or at least should
be) autonomous. This may seem strange for a discipline devoted to
showing how individual people are powerfully influenced, if not
constituted and determined, by their social environments. But
sociology’s sacred project finds a way to finesse this tension. The
controlling influencer that society is, which sociology reveals, is as-
sociated with the constraining (oppressive, exploiting, discriminat-
ing) part of human experience, which the individual needs to resist
and overcome if he or she is to be free, happy, and healthy.18 The
individual human person, then, is understood as naturally, and thus
ideally, autonomous—as a distinct agent (that should be) in charge
of its own body, self, decisions, and destiny. The crucial disciplin-
ary contribution to its own project is thus for sociology to discover
and expose the many unjust and oppressive ways that “society”

18. This “homo-duplex” model of individual-versus-society was the common assumption

of sociology’s founding fathers—see Christian Smith, 2015, To Flourish or Destruct:
A Personalist Theory of Human Goods, Motivations, Failure, and Evil, Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press; also see Jonathan Fish, 2013, “Homo Duplex Revisited: A De-
fense of Emile Durkheim’s Theory of Moral Self,” Journal of Classical Sociology, May 31,
pp. 1–21.

14
 T he A rgument

constraints, exploits, and oppresses individuals, so that they can

be challenged and surmounted. “The social” is thus construed as
essential to humanity’s problem, an all-too-often dehumanizing
force that must be subverted and reconstructed to foster individu-
als’ autonomy.
Human beings ought also, in this view, to be self-directing. People
should not be controlled or commanded by anyone but themselves.
The direction of action for each person must come from the will of
each person. Whatever happens by, with, and to any given person
should be determined by that person, and nothing or nobody else.
In this vision, human persons are obviously most authentically and
rightfully individuals. People are not cells of a social body, dwell-
ers on a Great Chain of Being, or subjects of Kingdom, Church, or
Nation. All people of course need to be—as sociology as a project
itself is—enlightened and converted and made part of the collec-
tive movement animated by this sacred project. But the movement
itself must never violate anyone’s individuality, for that would itself
violate the vision and commitment of the movement. Solidarity, in
short, is instrumental and contractual, not ontological and encum-
bering. Individuals, by this account, are also conceived of as agents.
This means they possess “agency.” Individuals are not fundamen-
tally objects on which other forces act but the subjects of action and
interaction of which they themselves are the efficient causes. They
thus are and rightly ought to be the capable, empowered, authorized
actors who make things happen in the world and in their own lives.
What, then, according to this sacred project, are these eman-
cipated, equal, morally affirmed, autonomous, self-directed, indi-
vidual agents to be doing with their individual freedom, equality,
affirmation, and autonomy? They should be acting to live their lives
as they so desire. Here the descriptive and the normative combine.
Humans are believed to be creatures both who naturally seek to
live as they desire (the descriptive) and who ought to live as they

15
 TH E SACR ED PROJECT OF A M ER ICA N SOCIOLOGY

so desire (the normative). The teleological end in this point follows

naturally from the philosophical-anthropology and moral com-
mitments to individual emancipation, autonomy, self-direction,
agency, and moral affirmation, as described above. People have
lives to live, and the best lives for them are those lived according
to the desires generated by each individual’s interests and wishes.
The good world envisioned by this sacred project, therefore, is one
in which each individual is free to live as he or she so desires—so
long, to recite the standard rule, as they do not prevent any other
individual from doing the same.
But does this sacred vision provide any more substantive con-
tent to what a good human life is likely to be, how individuals should
capitalize upon their freedom and equality? Yes. Three somewhat
substantive focuses help to define good human ends here. One in-
volves individuals constructing their own favored identities. The ques-
tion concerns who people are, in their own self-­understanding and
in the way others understand them. Identities define people and
form their experiences. So each person needs to be able to con-
struct his or her own identity in ways that fit their self-determined
desires in life. Inherited and ascribed identities of family, religion,
race, ethnicity, town, occupation, sexual orientation, and so on may
not fit individual desires, so must be ready to be cast off or recon-
structed. This of course requires an openness and fluidity in self-
understanding. It also requires proficiency in the manipulation of
symbolic markers of identity—styles of clothing, language, hair
style and color, bodily inscriptions (tattoos, etc.), and so on—in
order to achieve the desired self-presentation and affirmation. In
any case, no other person or institution should be able to tell anyone
who and what she or he is. That is a matter for each individual to
decide, create, and express for herself or himself.
Two other somewhat substantive features of the individually
self-directed good life envisioned by American sociology’s spiritual

16
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
the murdered Guise"--and as she spoke, her eye flashed for a
moment with all the fiery spirit of her race;--"it might be supposed
that the sister of the murdered Guise should not bound her wishes
for revenge, till she saw the assassin's blood flow like water in the
kennel. But she is more charitable, or, rather, he is too pitiful a thing
to be worthy of severe punishment. With these scissors shall be cut
off his royal locks, ere he quits the courtly world for the world of the
cloister; and on his head shall he bear this crown, from the door of
Notre Dame to the abbey of St. Denis, when he goes to take the
vows that exclude him for ever from the world."

D'Aubin laughed. "So, this crown is for King Henry!" he exclaimed:

"and have you never thought, madam, of cutting out another, from
some different materials, for your noble brother of Mayenne?"

"It must be an iron crown, then," replied the Duchess, tossing her
head proudly; "and he must hew it out for himself, with his good
sword."

"Rather a Cyclopean labour," remarked D'Aubin; "rather a

Cyclopean labour I suspect! especially since Harry of Valois, to whom
you deny the crown, has chosen to turn up his hat with a Huguenot
button."

"We shall see, we shall see!" replied the Duchess: "I know, sir
Count, you laugh at all parties; so I understand not why you should
cling so fondly to the rabble of accursed murderers and heretics,
who lie out there at St. Cloud, like vipers in a garden."

D'Aubin laughed outright at the Duchess's vehemence, and

reminded her that some of her near relations were amongst the
rabble she so qualified.

"They are none the less vipers for that," she replied: and the
conversation taking a turn neither very wise nor very decent, may as
well be omitted in this place. It lingered on, however, from minute to
minute, without the Duchess making any apparent effort to fulfil the
promise she had made to D'Aubin, and send away the idlers by
whom she was surrounded. Too long accustomed to the intriguing
society of Paris, and too well acquainted with the character of the
wily woman with whom he had now to deal, not to be armed at all
points against every art and deception, D'Aubin began to suspect
that the Duchess was trifling with him for some particular purpose,
and was seeking to occupy him with other matters, till some
moment of importance, to himself or his cousin, was irretrievably
lost.

"Hark!" he exclaimed, as this thought crossed his mind; "there is

the clock of St. Gervais striking one, and I must really seek my lord
the Duke."

"I hear no clock," replied the Duchess--nor could she, for none
had struck--"I hear no clock! But not yet, D'Aubin, not yet; I am not
yet going to slip the jesses of my faucon gentil, after having just
recovered him from so long a flight. Stay you with me, D'Aubin, and
I will send and see if my brother be within. You go, Mont-Augier,"
she added, turning to one of the young cavaliers, who instantly
sprang to obey her; but, ere he reached the door, the Duchess, by a
sudden movement, placed herself near him; and, while D'Aubin was
for a moment occupied by some other person present, she said, in a
low voice, "Do not return, do not return: we must keep the Count
away from Mayenne, or they will together spoil some of our best
schemes."

D'Aubin's eye turned upon her; and his quick suspicions might
have gone far to counteract her purposes, had not Madame de
Montpensier, almost as soon as Mont-Augier's back was turned,
contrived, on various pretences, to dismiss the rest of her little court.
Left thus alone with a fascinating and beautiful woman, who
condescended to court his society, D'Aubin could not resist the
temptation to trifle away with her half an hour of invaluable time,
though he knew all her arts, and even suspected that, on the
present occasion, they were employed against him for insidious
purposes. He was on the watch, however, and, ere long, the clatter
of many horses' feet in the court-yard caught his attention, and led
him instantly to conclude that the Duke of Mayenne was about to go
forth, without having seen him. It was now all in vain that Madame
de Montpensier, who likewise heard the sounds, and attributed them
to the same cause, endeavoured to occupy his attention by every
little art of coquetry. D'Aubin started up, and, in gay, but resolute
terms, expressed his determination of seeing the Duke ere he left
the house.

To what evasion Madame de Montpensier would have had

recourse, is difficult to say; but, ere she could reply, the door
opened, and a lady entered, whom we will not pause here to
describe. Suffice it, that she was the widow of the murdered Duke of
Guise, and that, though her person wore the weeds, her face
betrayed few of the sorrows, of widowhood.

"Catherine! Catherine!" she exclaimed, entering; "there is our

slow brother of Mayenne just returned, and calling for you so quickly
that one would think he were himself as nimble as Harry of
Navarre."

"Returned! I knew not that he was absent!" replied the Duchess

de Montpensier, with an air of irrepressible mortification, on finding
that all her arts had been thrown away, and, instead of preventing
D'Aubin from seeing her brother ere he went forth, had only tended
to keep the Count there till he returned. A meaning smile, too, on
the lip of D'Aubin, served to increase her chagrin; and she
exclaimed, with a slight touch of pettish impatience in her tone,
"Well, well, I go to him; and you, my fair sister, had better stay and
console this tiresome man, till my return."

The Duchess of Guise saw that something had gone wrong; but
D'Aubin laughed, and replied, as Madame de Montpensier turned
towards the door, "May I request you to tell his Highness that the
tiresome man waits an audience; and, as his business will be
explained in few words, he will not detain the Duke so long as he
has detained Madame de Montpensier,--or as, perhaps, I might say,
more truly, Madame de Montpensier has detained him,--probably
under a mistake;" and he made her a low and significant bow, to
which she only replied by shaking her finger at him as she passed
through the doorway.

"Where is the Duke?" she demanded eagerly of the pages in the

corridor, who started up at her approach; and then, scarcely
listening to their answer, she hurried on to the room in which she
expected to find him, and opened the door without ceremony. The
Duke was seated at a table, hastily sealing some letters, while a
courier, booted, spurred, and armed, stood by his side, ready to bear
them to their destinations as soon as the packets were complete.

"Why, how now, Catherine!" he exclaimed, turning towards her as

she entered, and, in so doing, spilling the boiling wax over his broad
hand, without suffering the pain to produce the slightest change of
expression on his heavy, determined countenance; "why, how now,
Catherine! you have been tampering, I find, with things wherein you
have no right to meddle. What is this business about the young
Marquis of St. Real? Is it not bad enough that that rash boy, Aumale,
should lose me a battle beneath the walls of Senlis, without my
sister losing me my honour?"

"Tush, nonsense, Duke of Mayenne!" replied his sister;

"Nonsense, I tell you! If you intend that packet for Senlis, you may
spare the wax, and your trouble, and your fingers, for it shall never
go!"

"Indeed!" said the Duke, pressing firm upon it the broad seal of
his arms; "indeed! and why not? Do you not know me better than
that, my fair sister? Do you not know that my word, or my safe-
conduct, was never in life violated by myself, and never shall be
violated by any one else with impunity?"
 "All very true! all very true, Charles of Mayenne!" she replied;
"but, in the first place, I tell you that your safe-conduct cannot be
said to be violated, because some friends of mine choose to help
this young St. Real to pursue his journey on the very road for which
the safe-conduct was given; and, in the second place, there is no
use of sending to Mortfontaine or Nanteuil either, for within an hour
St. Real will be, I trust, in Paris."

"Then within an hour he shall be set at liberty!" replied the Duke;

"for I shall suffer no quibbling with my honour: he shall be free to
come and free to go, till the term of the safe-conduct expires."

"Nonsense, nonsense, Charles!" replied the Duchess; "do not talk

like the man in the mystery. Send this fellow away, and let me speak
with you calmly; for here is the Count d'Aubin already in the house;
and, if you go on vapouring in this way, you may miss a golden
opportunity of gaining more than the battle of Senlis has lost."

The Duke made a sign for the courier to withdraw. "I know your
skill well, Kate!" he said, as the man left the room, "and am far from
wishing to counteract your views; but neither must you meddle with
my schemes, nor affect my honour. Now let me hear what it is you
have done, and what you propose to do."

"For the done first, then," replied Madame de Montpensier: "what

I have done is simply this:--Hearing from good authority that this St.
Real had left his troops under the command of his Lieutenant, and,
while his cousin D'Aubin went to join Longueville, at Chantilly, had
shown a strong inclination to seek the camp of the Henrys before he
came to Paris, I thought it much better to change his destination,
and bring him hither, well knowing that the first step is all. So much
for the past! and now for the future. Leave him but in my hands two
days; and if, in that time, I do not find a way, by one means or
another, to make him put his hand to the Union, and draw his sword
for Mayenne, why, set him free, in God's name! and then talk of your
honour and your safe-conducts as much as you like. He shall be well
and kindly treated, upon my word!"

The Duke smiled. "I doubt not that, Catherine," he said; "you and
your fair sister of Guise, who, I suppose, has some hand in the affair,
are not such hard-hearted dames, I know, as to use harsh
measures, when tender ones will do."

"Well, well, Mayenne," she answered, "if we bestow our smiles to

promote your interest, you, at least, have no occasion to complain,
good brother: but you consent, is it not so?"

"On condition that no harshness is used--that I know not where

he is--that I see him not--and, that he finds no means for applying
for liberation to me: for on the instant I set him free!"

"Manifold conditions!" replied his sister; "but they shall be all

complied with. And now for the Count d'Aubin. If we can but win St.
Real, I will promise you D'Aubin; for I know one or two of the good
Count's secrets, which give me some tie upon him."

"I hold him by a stronger bond," replied the Duke; "the bond of
interest, Catherine; for, by my faith, if he quit not soon him whom
Beatrice of Ferrara calls the crowned Vice at St. Cloud, I will give the
hand of Eugenie de Menancourt to some better friend of the League.
I am glad he is come, for I may give him a gentle notice to decide
more speedily."

At the name of Beatrice de Ferrara, the cheek of Madame de

Montpensier reddened, and her brow contracted; and, without
noticing the concluding words of her brother, she replied, "I hate
that woman, that Beatrice of Ferrara!" and as she spoke, she moved
absently towards the door. The Duke marked her with a smile, and
followed, saying, "Well, well, where is this Count d'Aubin?"

The Duchess led the way to the apartment in which he had been
left with the Duchess de Guise, and where she still found him,
bandying repartees with the fair widow, and with the Chevalier
d'Aumale, who had lately been added to the party. The entrance of
the Duke of Mayenne, however, at once put a stop to the light jests
which were flying thick and fast; and the Duke, without preface,
entered upon the subject of D'Aubin's journey to Paris.

"Good morrow! Monsieur le Comte," said he, with an air of

unconsciousness, which his somewhat inexpressive countenance
enabled him easily to assume. "Right glad was I of your application
for a safe-conduct last night, doubting not that, by this time, you are
heartily tired of consorting with the effeminate rabble of painted
minions and Huguenot boors gathered together at St. Cloud, and are
come to support the Catholic faith, with a sharp sword, that has
been somewhat too long employed against her."

"Your Highness's compliment to the sharpness of my sword,"

replied D'Aubin, "does not, I am afraid, extend to the sharpness of
my wit; for the occurrences which have taken place within the last
five days are surely not calculated to bring over a cousin of the
Marquis of St. Real to the party of the Catholic League, or to raise
very high the character of dealers in Spanish Catholicon."

The Duke of Mayenne turned a sharp and somewhat angry glance

upon Madame de Montpensier; but to D'Aubin he replied coldly, "You
seem angry, Monsieur le Comte d'Aubin; and as it is far from my
wish to give just cause for anger to a French nobleman, whose good
sense, I am sure, will, sooner or later, detach him from a party
composed of all that is either infamous or heretical, if you will
explain the subject of your wrath, I will do all that is in my power to
satisfy you, if I shall find your complaints just and reasonable."

"My complaint is simply this, my lord Duke," replied D'Aubin,

smiling at the air of unconsciousness which Mayenne assumed:--"If
my imagination have not deceived me, somewhat less than a month
ago, Charles, Duke of Mayenne vouchsafed, under the title of
lieutenant-general of the kingdom, to grant a regular safe-conduct to
a noble gentleman called the Marquis of St. Real, in order that the
said Marquis might visit, in safety, the capital of this country, as well
as the court of King Henry, in order to judge between the factions
which strangle this unhappy land, and take his part accordingly."

"True," said the Duke of Mayenne, bowing his head, "true, we did
so."

"Well, then, my lord," continued D'Aubin, "is it not equally true

that, when my cousin, St. Real, thought fit to leave his forces at a
sufficient distance from either army to give him an opportunity of
joining which he pleased hereafter, and was advancing calmly to
confer with the King, he was entrapped by false information,
surrounded by a party wearing the green scarfs of the League, and
carried off, in direct contravention of the safe-conduct you had given
him?"

"I will not affect to deny, Monsieur d'Aubin," replied the Duke,--
and Madame de Montpensier looked in no small anxiety while he
spoke; "I will not affect to deny, that the rumour of some such
skirmish as you speak of has reached me--"

"Skirmish, my lord Duke!" exclaimed D'Aubin; "there has been no

skirmish in the business; the simple facts are these:--My cousin, with
only twenty gentlemen in his train, was surrounded by a party of
two hundred men; and, of course, offered no resistance. He
produced your safe-conduct, however; but it was set at nought and
the leaders of the band gave him very sufficiently to understand,
that they had your own authority for what they did. Such, at least, is
the account brought to me by one of my cousin's attendants, who
contrived to effect his escape; and I now make the charge boldly
and straightforwardly, in order that you may have the opportunity of
clearing yourself at once; or, that the spot of darkness, which such a
transaction must affix to the character of the Duke of Mayenne, may
be stamped upon it in characters which no aftertime can efface."
 The Duke reddened, and bit his lip. "You make me angry, sir!" he
said--"you make me angry!"

"No cause for anger, my lord Duke," replied D'Aubin, "if you be
clear of this transaction. It is I who am a friend to the character of
the Duke of Mayenne, by giving him an instant opportunity of
clearing it;--and let me say, my lord, if you be not free from share in
this business," he added, sternly and boldly, "you may find that you
are not the only one who is made angry: for, putting aside all
respect to your high rank, and to the station which you hold, I shall
urge the matter against you as noble to noble, and gentleman to
gentleman."

"Was ever the like heard?" exclaimed Madame de Montpensier.

"Heed him not, Brother of Mayenne! heed him not; the man is mad,
raving mad!"

"Not so mad, nor so foolish, lady," replied D'Aubin, his lip bending
into a slight smile, "as to be turned from my purpose, either by
sweet words, or angry ones. My lord Duke," he continued,
approaching nearer to the Duke of Mayenne, who had taken a hasty
turn in the room, as if to give his passion vent before he spoke; "my
lord Duke, I mean not to offend you; but my cousin has suffered
wrong, and that wrong must be redressed."

"You have spoken too boldly, Count d'Aubin," replied Mayenne, to

whom the considerations of policy had by this time restored the
calmness of which personal anger had deprived him: "but I must
make excuses for the warmth of affection which you seem to bear
your cousin; and, in reply to your charge, I have merely to say, that
the first correct information respecting this event"--and he turned a
somewhat reproachful glance upon Madame de Montpensier--"has
been received from yourself; that the capture of your cousin was
unauthorized by, and unknown to me; that I know not precisely in
whose hands he is; and, that I promise you, upon my honour, he
shall be set free as soon as ever I meet with him. Farther still, I
pledge myself to find him and liberate him before three days have
expired, and to punish, most severely, those who are concerned, in
case he have met with any ill-treatment whatever."

"Your promise goes farther than even I could expect, my lord

Duke," replied D'Aubin, in a softened tone; "and I most sincerely
thank you for having met so candidly a charge which I may,
perhaps, have urged too boldly, as your Highness says. Forgive my
hastiness, my lord; for, on my honour, in these times of indifference,
it is sometimes necessary to give way to a little rashness, in order to
show that we have some heart and feeling left."

"We esteem you all the more highly for it," answered the Duke,
"and only regret, Monsieur d'Aubin, that one who can so well feel
what is right and noble, in some points, should attach himself to a
party stained with murder, treachery, falsehood, and many a vice
that I will not number; while sense, and wisdom, and good feeling
should all induce him to take the more patriotic part that we are in
arms to maintain."

"And, let me add, his own interest also," said Madame de

Montpensier, "should lead him to join us here."

"Wisely reserving the best argument for the last!" joined in the
Chevalier d'Aumale. "The great God Interest, first cousin to the little
God Mammon, is powerful both with Catholic and Huguenot,
Leaguer and Royalist; and doubtless, beautiful priestess, if you can
show that the Deity favours the League more than its opponents,
you will soon bring over Monsieur d'Aubin to worship at his shrine."

"That can be easily shown," rejoined the Duke of Mayenne,

following the idea of the Chevalier d'Aumale, half in jest and half in
earnest: "Has not the god already put at our disposal sundry
Huguenot lands and lordships, purses well stuffed with gold, and,
above all, the hand of more than one fair heiress? On my word!
Monsieur d'Aubin," he added, assuming a more serious and feeling
tone, "far would it be from me to hold out to you views of interest,
in order to bring you over to the party of the Faith, did not those
views of interest coincide entirely with your honour, your reputation,
and your duty."

D'Aubin mused for a moment, and then answered laughing, "I

never yet did hear, my lord, that interest did not bring a long train of
seeming virtues, to give greater strength to her own persuasions:
and yet, I do not see how my honour could be raised by abandoning
my king at a moment of his greatest need; how my reputation could
be increased by quitting a party which I have long served; or how
my duty is to be done by breaking my oath of allegiance to my
legitimate sovereign."

"Thus, Monsieur d'Aubin," replied the Duke:--"if you are a man of

honour,--and most truly do I hold you to be such,--you will flee the
society of those who have none; if you have a fair reputation, you
will quit a court whose very breath is infamy; and, if you hold
sincerely to the Catholic faith, you cannot refuse to turn your sword
against its most inveterate enemies."

"No, no, my lord!" replied D'Aubin; "King Henry holds the Catholic
faith as well as yourself; and, indeed, loves monks and priests rather
better than either you or I do. To him, also, have I sworn fidelity and
attachment, as my lawful sovereign; and I will neither break my
oath, nor forget my allegiance."

"Thank God, that the thread of a tyrant's life is spun of very

perishable materials!" said Madame de Montpensier, with a
significant glance at the Duchess de Guise; "and were this Henry
dead, we might well count upon you, D'Aubin: is it not so?"

D'Aubin replied not for a moment; and the soft sleepy-eyed

Duchess of Guise could not refrain from pursuing the subject
jestingly; although her sister-in-law endeavoured, by a chiding look,
to stay her, till D'Aubin had answered. "Perhaps the noble Count may
be a Huguenot himself." she exclaimed: "who knows, in these
strange changeable times----"

"Or, perhaps, this dearly-beloved cousin of his may have been one
these twenty years," said the Chevalier d'Aumale; "for shut up in
that old castle of theirs, these St. Reals may have been Turks and
infidels, for anything that we can tell."

"I wish there was as good a Catholic present as St. Real," replied
D'Aubin; "and as for myself, though not very learned in all its
mysteries, I hold the faith of my fathers, and will not abandon it. My
lord of Mayenne, I would fain speak with you for one moment, in
this oriel here," he added.

The Duke of Mayenne instantly complied; and, advancing with the

Count into the deep recess of one of the windows at the farther end
of the room, he listened to what D'Aubin had to say, and then
replied gravely. The Count rejoined; and, though the subject which
they discussed seemed to interest them highly, it might be inferred,
from the laughter which occasionally mingled with their discourse,
that their conversation had taken a turn towards some topic less
unpleasant than that which had been broached at the beginning of
their first interview.

In the meantime, however, a new personage had been added to

the party at the other end of the room. He was a tall gaunt man, of
about five-and-forty, with aquiline features, a keen kite-like eye, fine
teeth, and curly hair and beard: in short, he was one of those men
who are called handsome by people in whose computation of beauty
the expression of mind, and soul, and feeling make no part of the
account. His dress was not only military, but of such a character as
to show that his most recent occupation had been the exercise of his
profession. The steel cuirass was still upon his shoulders, the heavy
boots upon his legs; and, though some attempt had been made to
brush away the dust of a journey, a number of long brown streaks,
on various parts of his apparel, evinced, that whatever toilet he had
made had been hasty and incomplete.

As soon as Madame de Montpensier caught the first glance of his

person entering the saloon, she made him an eager sign not to
come in; but he either did not perceive, or was unwilling to obey the
signal, and proceeded, with an air of perfect assurance, till the
Duchess, starting up, advanced to meet him; trusting, apparently,
that the eager conversation which was going on between D'Aubin
and the Duke would prevent either of them from remarking her
man[oe]uvres at the other end of the room.

"What, in misfortune's name, brought you here?" she said, giving

a hasty glance towards the oriel, and perceiving at once that she
must make the best of what had occurred, for that D'Aubin's eye had
already marked the entrance of the stranger; "what, in misfortune's
name, brought you here just now? Here is D'Aubin himself inquiring
furiously after this young kestril, that we have taken such pains to
catch; and Mayenne, like a fool, standing on his honour, has
promised to set him free as soon as ever he finds dim. So you know
nothing about the matter: pretend utter ignorance; and swear you
have never seen the young Marquis."

"That I can well swear," replied the other, in the same low tone,
but with a slight Teutonic accent; "that I can well swear, most
beautiful and charming of princesses! for I took especial care to
keep out of the way while the poor bird was being limed; and have
ridden on before to tell you that, by this time, he must be safe in my
house, in the rue St. Jacques."

"Keep him close and sure, then," replied Madame de Montpensier,

"at least till his shrewd cousin is out of the city; for Mayenne will let
us keep him but two days; and we must work him to our purpose
before that time expires." She had just time to finish her sentence,
ere Mayenne and D'Aubin quitted the recess of the oriel window;
and the latter, advancing towards the place where she stood,
addressed her companion as an old acquaintance.

"Ha! Sir Albert of Wolfstrom," he said, with an ironical smile,

"faithful and gallant ever! Receiving the soft commands of this
beautiful lady with the same devotion as in days of yore, I see! But I
have reason to believe that you are lately become acquainted with
one of my cousins, and have laid him under some obligations."

"No, no;" replied Wolfstrom, with a grin, which showed his white
teeth to the back; "no, no: if you mean Monsieur de Rus, we have
been very intimate ever since that night when we three played
together at Vincennes, and when I won from you ten thousand
livres, Monsieur d'Aubin."

"Well, well, I will win them back again," replied D'Aubin, "the first
truce that comes."

"I don't know that," rejoined the German; "you are always
unlucky with the dice, D'Aubin: you should be more careful, or, by
my faith, the Jews will have all your fine estates in pawn."

D'Aubin coloured deeply; for, as Wolfstrom well knew, the hint

that he threw out of excessive expenses, and consequent
embarrassments, went home. Mayenne, however, who by those
words gained a new insight into the situation of the Count, smiled,
well satisfied; assured, from that moment, that those who had it in
their power to grant or to withhold the hand of the rich heiress of
Menancourt would not be long without the support of Philip d'Aubin.

The Count recovered himself in a moment; and, turning the

matter off with a pointed jest, which hit the German nearly as hard,
he prepared to take his leave before anything more unpleasant could
be said.

"I shall look for the performance of your promise, my lord Duke,"
he said, as he turned to depart; "and three days hence, shall hope
to hear that my cousin has been liberated."

"Come, to make sure of it, yourself," replied Madame de

Montpensier, holding out her hand, which he raised in gallant
reverence to his lips; "come and make sure of it, yourself. Sup with
me at Rene Armandi's, our dearly beloved perfumer, who has a right
choice and tasteful cook; and, though the profane rabble insist upon
it that he used to aid our godmother, of blessed memory, Catherine,
mother of many bad kings, in sending to heaven, or the other
abode, various persons, to prepare a place for her, we will ask him,
on this occasion, to give us dainties, and not poisons."

"You must send me a safe-conduct, however," replied D'Aubin,

laughing, "and I will come with all my heart."

"A safe-conduct you shall have," answered Mayenne, "and as

many as you like. But, remember, I do not make myself responsible
for Armandi no, nor Catherine, either," he added, with a smile.

"Oh! I will trust her Highness," replied D'Aubin: "the only thing I
fear are her eyes;" and, with a low bow, and a glance which left it
difficult to determine whether the gallant part of his speech was jest
or earnest, he took his leave, and, mounting his horse, rode away
towards the gates of Paris.

"He teases me, that Count d'Aubin," said Madame de

Montpensier: "I don't know whether to love him, or to hate him."

"Oh! if he teases you, you will love him, of course," replied the
Chevalier d'Aumale.

"I think you may love him, Kate," replied the Duke. "At all events,
one thing is very certain, that Philip Count d'Aubin is varying fast
towards the League; and if you, Catherine, by some of your wild
schemes, do not spoil my more sober ones, we shall soon have him
as one of our most strenuous and thoroughgoing partisans: for you
know, Wolfstrom," he added, laying his broad hand significantly
upon the iron-covered shoulder of the German, who, together with
three thousand lansquenets, had deserted from the party of Henry
III. on the pretence of wanting pay; "for you know, Wolfstrom, there
is no one so zealous as a renegade!"

CHAPTER X.

Those were busy days in Paris! So manifold were the intrigues, so

frequent the changes, so rapid the events, of that time, that it would
have required almost more than mortal strength and activity, in
those who played any prominent part amongst the factions of the
day, to accomplish the incessant business of every succeeding hour,
had not that levity, for which the Parisians have been famous in
every age of history, stood them in better stead than philosophy
could have done, and taught them to consider the fierce turmoil of
party, the eager anxiety of intrigue, and even the appalling scenes of
strife and bloodshed in which they lived, rather as playthings and as
pageants, than as fearful realities.

No sooner had the conference terminated, of which we have

given an outline in the last chapter, than Madame de Montpensier,
leaving her brother of Mayenne to break his somewhat bitter jest
upon the leader of the lansquenets, hurried from the room; but, ere
the conversation which succeeded was over, though it lasted but a
very brief space, she reappeared, covered with what was then called
a penitent's cloak, and holding her mask in her hand, as if prepared
to go forth.
 Beckoning Wolfstrom towards her, she spoke with him for a few
moments, in an under tone; and then, concluding with, "Well, be as
quick as possible, and bring me some certain tidings," she again
quitted the apartment, without making Mayenne, who was
conversing upon lighter matters with the Duchess de Guise and the
Chevalier d'Aumale, a sharer in her plans and purposes.

We shall not follow the progress of her chair through the long,
tortuous, busy streets of Paris; nor record how her attendants
cleared the way through many a crowd, gathered together round the
stall of some great bookseller, or before the stage on which some
itinerant friar, like a mountebank of modern times, sold his treasure
of relics, or chaplets, or authentic pictures of saints and martyrs, or
the still-valued indulgence, which the church of Rome did not fail to
grant to those who had money and folly enough to purchase either
the right of eating flesh, while others were doomed to fish, or the
gratification of any other little carnal inclination, not held amongst
irremissible sins. Suffice it that--amidst stinks, and shouts, and
bawlings, mingled now and then with the "shrill squeaking of the
wry-necked fife," and various savoury odours were wafted from the
kitchens in which cooks, and traiteurs, and aubergistes prepared all
sorts of viands, from the fat quail, and luscious ortolan, to good
stout horse-flesh and delicate cat--the Princess's vehicle bore her on,
till wide at her approach flew open the gates of the Dominican
convent, in the rue St. Jacques, and, entering the first court, the
Duchess set down, under the archway, on the left-hand side.

After whispering a word to the frere portier, the errant daughter

of the noble house of Guise was led through the long and narrow
passages of the building, not to the parlour which usually formed the
place of reception by the priors of the convent, but to a small room,
which had but one door for entrance, and but one narrow window to
admit the needful light. The furniture was as simple as it could be,
consisting of five or six long-backed ebony chairs, a table, a crucifix,
a missal, and a human skull, not, as usual, nicely cleaned and
polished, so as to take away all idea of corruption from the round,
smooth, meaningless ball of shining bone, but rough and foul as it
came from the earth, with the black dirt sticking in the hollows
where once had shone the light of life, and the green mould of the
grave spreading faint and sickly over the fleshless chaps.

Standing before the table, with his arms crossed upon his breast,
and his dark gleaming eye fixed upon the memento of the tomb,
stood a tall pale man, habited in the black robe of a prior of the
order of St. Dominick, with the white under-garment of the
Dominicans still apparent. He raised his eyes as the Duchess
entered, but fixed them again immediately upon the skull; and, ere
he proceeded to notice in words the approach of his visitant, he
muttered what appeared to be a brief prayer, and bowed towards
the cross.

"Welcome, madam!" he said, at length; "I have been eagerly

expecting you; for it will not be long ere vespers, and we have much
to consider."

"I have been forced to delay," replied the Duchess, "in order to
save some of our very best schemes from going wrong. But is not
Armandi come? He should have been here an hour ago."

"He is here, though he has not been here so long," replied the
Prior. "I made them keep him without till you came; for I love not his
neighbourhood."

"I ought to pray your forgiveness, father, for bringing him here at
all," said the Duchess; "but, in truth--"

"Make no excuse, lady, make no excuse!" answered the Prior. "We

labour for the holy church--we labour for the faith; and there is no
weapon put within our reach by God, but we have law and licence to
use it against the rank and corrupted enemies of the church militant
upon earth. Did not the blessed St. Dominick himself say, 'Let the
sword do its work, and let the fire do its work, till the threshing-floor
of the house of God be thoroughly purged and purified of the husks
and the chaff which pollute it?' Did not he himself lead the way in
the extirpation of the heretics of old, till the rivers of Languedoc,
from their source even to the ocean, flowed red with the foul blood
of the enemies of the faith? And shall we, his poor followers, halt
like fastidious girls at any means of pursuing the same great object,
of obtaining the same holy end? As I hope to reach the heaven that
has long received our sainted founder, if this Armandi can find
means of accomplishing our mighty purpose, I will embrace him as a
brother, and pronounce with my own lips his absolution from all the
many sins of his life, on account of that worthy act in defence of the
Catholic faith. Shall I call him in?"

"By all means!" said the Duchess, seating herself near the table:
"by all means! let us hear what he has devised."

The Prior of the Dominican, or rather, as it was called in Paris, the

Jacobine, convent, proceeded to the door, and made a sign to some
one, who, standing at the end of the long passage, seemed to wait
his commands; and, after a momentary pause, an inferior brother of
the order appeared, introducing the perfumer, habited in the same
silks and velvets wherewith we have seen him clothed when visited
by Beatrice of Ferrara, about an hour before. With a courtly sliding
step, inclined head, and rounded shoulders, Armandi advanced
towards the spot where the Duchess was seated; and, after laying
his hand upon his breast, and bowing low and reverently, drew back
a step beside her chair, as if waiting her commands, with a look of
deep humility. The Prior of the Jacobines seated himself at the same
time, and looked towards the Duchess, as if unwilling himself to
begin the conversation with the worthy coadjutor who had just
joined them. Madame de Montpensier, whose acquaintance with
Armandi was of no recent date, had not the same delicacy on the
subject, but at once began, in the familiar and jocular tone which
the light dames of Paris were but too much accustomed to use,
towards the smooth minister of evil that stood before her: "Well,
pink of perfumers," she said, "let us hear what means your
ingenious brain has devised for accomplishing the little object I
mentioned to you some days ago."

"Beautiful as excellent, and bright as noble!" replied Armandi, in

his sweetest tone; "adorable princess, whose charms the lowest of
her slaves may reverently worship, sorry I am to say, that the
enterprise which you have been graciously pleased to propose to
me, I--luckless I!--am unable to undertake."

The Duchess heard all his rhodomontade upon her charms--

although the very broadness of Armandi's flattery savoured
somewhat of mockery--with more complaisance than had been
evinced towards him by Beatrice of Ferrara; but the Prior listened
with impatience to his waste of words, and seemed to hear his
concluding declaration with disappointment and indignation.

"How is this?" cried he, "how is this? Surely thou, unscrupulous in

everything, affectest no vain qualms in regard to the tyrant at St.
Cloud! If thou holdest dear the Catholic faith,"--and the keen eyes of
the Prior fixed searching upon the soft smiling countenance of the
poisoner--"if thou art not infidel, or atheist, or Huguenot, thou wilt
clear away thy many sins, by exercising a trade, hellish in other
circumstances, in the only instance where it is not only justifiable
and praiseworthy, but where, by the great deliverance of the church,
it may merit you hereafter a crown of glory. Or is it, perchance," he
added, "that thou fearest because this tyrant is a king, and the son
of thy former patroness? I tell thee, that were he thine own brother,
as a good Catholic, thou shouldest not hesitate."

Armandi listened to the vehement declamation of the monk with

his usual composed air, and half subdued smile, and at the end
replied, with every apparent reverence--"No, holy Father Bourgoin;
you mistake entirely your humble and devoted servant. I am not so
presumptuous as to think, that what such a holy man as you tells
me to do can be against either right or religion; and, besides, I
would humbly beseech you to give me absolution for anything I
might do at your command; so that, being a sincere and devoted
Catholic, my conscience would be quite at ease." There was the
slightest possible curl on Armandi's lip as he spoke, which in the
eyes of the Dominican looked not unlike a sneer; but his manner, as
well as his words, was in every other point respectful, and he went
on in the same tone:--"Neither is it, reverend father, that the royal
object of the ministry which you wish me to practise, has had more
than one crown put upon his head, which makes me halt; for I never
yet could discover that the holy oil with which he is anointed has the
least resemblance to that elixir of life which forbids the approach of
death; or that in the golden circlet with which his brows are bound
lies any antidote for certain drugs that I possess. Nor am I moved by
considering that his most Christian Majesty is the son of my dear
and lamented mistress; for, taking into account the troublous world
in which we live, and the many difficulties, dangers, and disasters
which surround Henry at this moment, truly it would be no
uncharitable act to give him a safe and easy passport to another
world."

"Then why, why," demanded the Duchess, "why do you hesitate

to do so?"

"Sweet lady! it is because I cannot," answered Armandi: "the

King's precautions put all my arts at fault. Not a dish is set upon his
table, but a portion of it is tasted two hours before; his gloves
themselves are made within the circle of the court; his own
apothecary prepares the perfumes for his toilet; and the cosmetic
mask Which he wears in bed, to keep his countenance from the chill
night air, is manufactured by his own royal hands."

Madame de Montpensier and the Prior looked at each other with

somewhat sullen and disappointed looks; and Armandi added,
"Unless you can get me admitted to his household, I fear my skill
can be of no avail."
 "We have no such interest with the effeminate tyrant," replied
Madame de Montpensier, "and so this scheme is hopeless," she
added. "But I fear me, Armandi, that, from some love to this tyrant,
or to his minions, your will is less disposed to find the means than
the means difficult to be found."

"No, as I live, beautiful princess!" answered the poisoner, with

more eagerness than he often displayed. "No, as I live! I had once a
daughter, lady, as beautiful as you are; and it was her father's pride
that she should be wise and chaste: when one mid-day, in the open
streets of Paris, my child was met by the base minion, Saint Maigrin,
hot with pride, and vice, and wine. He treated her as if she had been
an idle courtesan; and how far he would have carried his brutality,
none but the dead can tell, had not a gentleman, whose name I
know not, rescued her from his hands: although so hurt and
terrified, that, ere long, she died. I called loudly for justice, lady--I
called with the voice of a father and a man; but I was heard by this
Henry, who has never been a father, and is but half a man. He
mocked me openly: but the house of Guise, in revenging their own
wrongs, revenged mine; and you may judge whether I would not
willingly aid you to remove from the earth one who has cumbered it
too long."

"Then you absolutely cannot do it?" demanded the priest.

"I cannot," answered Armandi; "but, if I may say so, reverend

father, I think you can."

"Ay, and how so?" asked the Prior, eagerly: "if it rests with me, it
is done; for, so help me Heaven! if this right hand could plant a
dagger in his heart, I would not pause between the conception and
the act: no, not the twinkling of an eye!--no, not the breathing of a
prayer! so sure am I that, by so doing, I should better serve the
Catholic faith, than had I the eloquence of St. Paul to preach it to
the world. How can I do it?"
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