unt whatever. They were threatened with the police, but still stood
firm, and not until an armed force actually descended upon them did they
retire in good order, bearing one of their company on a mattress. Those
interested in their behalf call attention to the fact that the sick
person had to be transported through the streets on the coldest day of
the season, while the party of the gendarmerie cause it to be understood
that said person only took to her bed when the judicial knock sounded at
the door.

Scandalous wrangling, petty bickering, the zealous wrath of true
conviction on either side,--there is room for them all in a contest like
this, where every one must wear the badge of party in plain sight, and
defend it as best he may, but defend it at all costs. To stand between
two such hostile forces is to be regarded as an enemy by both, and is a
situation that may seem equivocal even to lookers-on. Yet those who
listen habitually to the one man who has chosen that unenviable post can
hardly complain of want of clearness in his own defining of his
position. Pere Hyacinthe is sometimes held to be on the high road to
Protestantism. Any one who went out in the middle of some discourse of
his, and so heard only the warm-hearted, candid confession of sympathy
with all that is excellent among heretics, might carry away such an
impression: those who remain until the inevitable "_mais_" with which
the second proposition begins are convinced that to grasp the hand he
holds out for Church unity the Protestants would have many more steps to
take than he contemplates on his side, and that the meeting could by no
means be a halfway one. Another numerously-supported opinion is that of
his waiting only for a good opportunity to return to the true fold.
Certain it is that at all times and in all places he calls himself a
faithful son of that Church of which, as he ceases not to reiterate, he
has never sought the ruin, but the reform. Who, however, hearing the
scathing apostrophe that follows to the address of the misguided old man
who holds the keys of St. Peter can feel that this son of Rome, devoted
though he be, is very ready to sue for pardon? On the contrary, let the
shepherd repent, then the wandering sheep may come back to the flock. A
weightier charge against him than any other is that of betraying party,
of faithlessly turning his back on the cause he once espoused. But that
cause is still his, as he declares: no one has more