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his existence in the exercise of the most meritorious works. He said Mass in some small village before he was made the cure of a canton. He has preached, confessed, distributed alms to the poor, borne the viaticum to the sick, committed the dead to their last narrow home. The Roman prelate is often a great hulking fellow who has just left college, with the tonsure for his only sacrament. He is a Doctor of something or other, he owns some property, more or less, and he enters the Church as an amateur, to see if he can make something out of it. The Pope gives him leave to style himself _Monsignore_, instead of _Signore_, and to wear violet-coloured stockings. Clad in these he starts on his road, hoping it may lead him to a Cardinal's hat. He passes through the courts of law, or the administration, or the domestic service of the Vatican, as the case may be. All these paths lead in the right direction, provided the traveller pursuing them has zeal, and professes a pious scorn for liberal ideas. The ecclesiastical calling is by no means indispensable, but nothing can be achieved without a good stock of retrograde ideas. The prelate who should take the Emperor's letter to M. Edgar Ney seriously, would be, in vulgar parlance, done for; the only course open to him would be--to marry. At Paris, a man disappointed in ambition takes prussic acid; at Rome, he takes a wife. Sometimes the prelate is a cadet of a noble house, one in which the right to a red hat is traditional. Knowing this he feels that the moment he puts on his violet stockings, he may order his scarlet ones. In the meanwhile he takes his degrees, and profits by the occasion to sow his wild oats. The Cardinals shut their eyes to his conduct, so he does but profess wholesome ideas. Do what you please, child of princes, so your heart be but clerical! Finally, it is not uncommon to find among the prelates some soldiers of fortune, adventurers of the Church, who have been attracted from their native land by the ambition of ecclesiastical greatness. This corps of volunteers receives contingents from the whole Catholic world. These gentlemen furnish some strange examples to the Roman people; and I know more than one of them to whom mothers of families would on no account confide the education of their children. It has happened to me to have described in a novel[8] a prelate who richly deserved a thrashing; the good folks of Rome have named to me three or four whom t
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