n one fashion or another the Pope is
master of all the crowns in his communion, is at liberty to take them
away or to give them as he pleases, a liberty so many Popes have claimed
and so many have tried to put in action."

My argument was simple, applicable, natural, and pressing: it offered
itself, of itself. Wherefore, the confessor was amazed by it; he
blushed, he beat about the bush, he could not collect himself. By
degrees he did so, and replied to me in a manner that he doubtless
thought would convince me at once. "If the case you suggest were to
happen," he said, "and the Pope declaring for one disputant were to
excommunicate the other and all his followers, such excommunication would
not merely be unjust, it would be false; and it has never been decided
that a false excommunication should hinder us from doing our duty."

"Ah! my father," I said, "your distinction is subtle and clever, I admit.
I admit, too, I did not expect it, but permit me some few more
objections, I beseech you. Will the Ultramontanes admit the nullity of
the excommunication? Is it not null as soon as it is unjust? If the
Pope has the power to excommunicate unjustly, and to enforce obedience to
his excommunication, who can limit power so unlimited, and why should not
his false (or nullified) excommunication be as much obeyed and respected
as his unjust excommunication? Suppose the case I have imagined were to
happen. Suppose the Pope were to excommunicate one of the two brothers.
Do you think it would be easy to make your subtle distinction between a
false and an unjust excommunication understood by the people, the
soldiers, the bourgeois, the officers, the lords, the women, at the very
moment when they would be preparing to act and to take up arms? You see
I point out great inconveniences that may arise if the new doctrine be
accepted, and if the Pope should claim the power of deposing kings,
disposing of their crowns, and releasing their subjects from the oath of
fidelity in opposition to the formal words of Jesus Christ and of all the
Scripture."

My words transported the Jesuit, for I had touched the right spring in
spite of his effort to hide it. He said nothing personal to me, but he
fumed. The more he restrained himself for me the less he did so for the
matter in hand. As though to indemnify himself for his moderation on my
account, he launched out the more, upon the subject we were discussing.
In his heat, no longer mast