ower, in all your honours, in the admiration of the world.
To your false gods you wickedly sacrifice many human victims, and the
integrity of your own character. There is a compact among you by which
each is bound to respect his colleague's false god, and promote its
worship. The purest among you are at least guilty of this complicity.
You look away when there is a suggestion of foul conspiracies with vile
aims, or of the shameful intrigues of factions which crawl in the dark,
letting them go by in silence. You regard yourselves as incorrupt, and
you corrupt others! You distribute the public money regularly to people
who sell you their honour and the probity of their consciences. You
despise and you nurture this infamy, which goes on under the shadow of
your authority. It is more sinful to buy votes and flattery than to
sell them! You are the most corrupt of all! Your second sin is that you
consider lying a necessity of your position; you lie as you would drink
water. You lie to the people, lie to the Parliament, lie to the Crown,
lie to your adversaries, lie to your friends. I know--some of you do not
personally indulge in the general prevarication, but you tolerate it in
your colleagues. Many of you shrink from assuming this on entering the
seat of government, as, upon entering a mine, we put on a dirty dress to
protect our own and, on coming out, lay it down joyfully. But can
these, who are the best, call themselves faithful servants of Truth? You
believe in God, and perhaps on your death-bed you will believe you have
offended God most seriously, as statesmen, by your acts of violence
against the Church, in the name of the State. No, these will not be your
greatest sins. If men go into Parliament, and through Parliament into
the Government, who profess, as philosophers, not to know God, but who
rise up in the name of Truth against this arbitrary tyranny of Untruth,
they are serving God better than you and will be more pleasing to God
than you, who believe in Him as an idol and not as the Spirit of Truth,
than you who dare to talk of the putrefaction of Catholicism, you who
stink of falsity. Yes, who stink of it! You make the air of the heights
so impure, so contrary to what it should be, that it is difficult to
breathe it. You have a devout heart, _Signor Ministro_; do not tell me
that in this palace one cannot serve God."

"Do you know--" the Minister exclaimed angrily, crossing his arms
upon his breast, while the Un