had no knowledge of
them. He quietly permitted these plebiscitums to take effect with all
their consequences, quite the same as if the treaty had never existed.
Austria saw the treaty executed, as regarded every sacrifice to which she
had consented, and not without pain, that it was set aside in all the
points which set a limit to those sacrifices. But Austria was not the
strongest Power. Piedmont, meanwhile, adhibited her signature without
wincing under those of France and Austria. Thus, as Mgr. Pie of Poitiers
declared, the church was deprived of all human stay. Such a state of
things was not witnessed without emotion. Even in the frivolous society of
France a change had taken place since the days of the great revolution.
Catholic sentiment had gained among the lettered classes. The dethronement
of Pius VI. had passed unnoticed, like that of an ordinary sovereign. That
of Pius VII. had excited only some isolated animadversions. That of Pius
IX. raised storms of protestation on the one hand, and on the other
thunders of applause. One party so hated the Papacy as to become traitors
to their country, and bind themselves with a sort of wild enthusiasm,
first to the car of Italian unity, afterwards to that of Germany. They who
thought otherwise carried their love of the imperilled institution to such
an extent as to forget all their calculations, all their political
alliances, and to incur freely the displeasure of men in power, even to
sacrifice the favor of the multitude, favor which was not less valuable in
times of universal suffrage than that of power. The Roman question became
the inexhaustible subject of public discussions and private conversations.
It sometimes even occasioned family quarrels, and was a trying ordeal for
long-established friendships. Such extraordinary emotion on account of an
idea--an abstraction, as it was called by the indifferent, who took part
with neither one side nor the other--showed that society was not yet
corroded to the core by selfishness and purely material interests. It was
sick, indeed, but far from dead. The French government ought, surely, at
the outset, to have taken warning. It ought to have learned something from
the unanimity with which all the enemies of order, who were also its
enemies, supported its new policy, and the unanimity, not less remarkable,
with which religious people who, generally, had been its friends, combated
that policy. Both liberal and ultramontane Catholics