yal policy, of which we have the
saddening spectacle before our eyes."

These burning words of the eminent and patriotic French bishop must have
pierced the soul of Napoleon III. To any other man, at least, an Orsini
shell would have been less terrible. But, "_Perversi difficillime
corriguntur_." No reproaches, however severe and well deserved, no
remonstrance, however well founded, could move the French Emperor. A
greater power than that of words had impelled him towards the evil courses
which the great majority of the French nation, together with the whole
Catholic world, condemned. The bishops, meanwhile, continued to protest.
The Archbishop of Sens, Mellon-Jolly, dared to say, in accents of sorrow:
"Events, alas! are far beyond all that we feared." De Prilly, Bishop of
Chalons, Dean of the French Episcopate, thus wrote a few days before his
death: "Ah! who deserved less than Pius IX. to be attacked by so many
enemies! If the tears which he sheds are so bitter for himself, they are
terrible to those who cause them! A poor bishop, at the point of death, so
assures him and craves his benediction." The expiring prelate, one would
say, had foreseen the humiliation of Sedan. The courageous language of the
bishops was so much feared that it was thought necessary to silence them.
Napoleon, having endeavored in vain to remove their disquietude by
renewing his hollow protestations, denounced them as violent agitators,
abandoned them to the jeers of the infidel press, for which alone there
was liberty in those days, and finally forbade all journals whatsoever to
publish episcopal writings that bore any relation to the Roman question.
Thus did he think to escape the danger with which he was threatened by
silencing the tongues which warned him.

The learned Cardinal Donnet, so celebrated as a theologian, now showed the
abilities of a diplomatist. When Napoleon III. was at Bordeaux, on the
11th October, 1859, the cardinal, whose duty it was to compliment the
Emperor as his sovereign, failed not at the same time to remonstrate
against his tortuous policy. "We pray," said the pious cardinal, "we pray
confidently, persistently, and with hope which neither deplorable events
nor sacrilegious acts of violence extinguished. Our hopes, the realization
of which appears to be so remote, are founded on yourself, sire, next to
God. You were and you still desire to be the oldest son of the church, and
it cannot be forgotten that you spoke the