edini, his office enabling him to approach the Holy
Father at short intervals. He exerted a similar influence on all the
high officials of the Roman court.

In spite of all this favor the usual delays attendant upon serious
judicial investigations oppressed Father Hecker with the heavy dread
of "the law's delay," detaining him in Rome from the first week in
September, 1857, when the case was opened in the Propaganda, till it
was closed by the decision of the Congregation of Bishops and
Regulars early in the following March. Nor was the "insolence of
office" quite absent. He was once heard to tell of his having been
snubbed in the Pope's antechamber by some one in attendance, and
often put aside till he was vexed with many weary hours of waiting
and by being compelled to repeatedly return.

"I had to wait for three days," we read in the memoranda, "and then
was reproached and scolded by the monsignor in attendance for coming
late. I had not come late but had been kept waiting outside, and I
told him so. 'You will see those hills of Albano move,' said I,
'before I move from my purpose to see the Holy Father.' When he saw
my determination he changed and gave me my desired audience."

When events had taken the question out of the Jurisdiction of be
Redemptorist order and into the general court of the Catholic Church,
its settlement was found to be difficult. The restoration of Father
Hecker by a judicial decision would not, it is plain, have left him
and his companions in that harmonious relation so essential to their
personal happiness and to their success as missionaries. It was then
suggested that they should petition for a separate organization under
the Rule of St. Alphonsus approved by Benedict XIV., acting directly
subject to the Holy See, thus making two Redemptorist bodies in the
United States, as is the case with various Franciscan communities. It
was also suggested that the Cisalpine, or Neapolitan Redemptorists,
at that time an independent congregation, would gladly take the
American Fathers under their jurisdiction. The alternative was what
afterwards took place--the dispensation of the Fathers from their
vows, in view of their forming their own organization under direction
of the Bishops and the Holy See. A petition praying the Holy Father
to give them either the Rule of Benedict XIV. in the sense above
suggested, or their dispensations from the vows, was drawn up and
forwarded by the Fathers remaining in A