but I cannot say as much of his representative who comes to insult me in
my own house." Pius IX. vainly hoped that the Envoy would be disowned, and
diplomatic relations between Rome and St. Petersburgh continued. When
Alexander II. suppressed, by his own authority, in 1867, the Catholic
diocese of Kaminieck, Pius IX. was obliged to have recourse to the
newspaper press, in order to make known to the Catholics of that
unfortunate country that he appointed the Bishop of Zitomir provisional
administrator. "I have no other means of communicating with them," said he
"I act like the captain of a vessel who encloses in a bottle his last
words to his family, and confides them to the storm, hoping that the waves
will deposit them on some shore where they will be gathered up."

(M94) Pius IX. showed himself as generous to princes as to peoples, acting
always as the champion of justice in the cause of the former, as well as
in supporting the undoubted rights of the latter. Francis II., of Naples,
dethroned by his ambitious cousin, King Victor Emmanuel, was, as the
Bonapartes had once been, an exile at Rome, and enjoyed the same princely
hospitality which his predecessor, in 1848, had extended to the Holy
Father in the Kingdom of Naples. Victor Emmanuel remonstrated against this
kindness to a fallen enemy. But in vain! He was powerless. His ally and
patron, however, the French Emperor, was not so easily resisted. This
potentate gave it to be understood, although not in express terms, that
the stay of the French troops at Rome was dependent on the departure of
the exiled monarch. The Pope, alluding to the family of Napoleon I., whom
Pius VII. had kindly received at Rome, replied, satirically, that the
Roman Pontiffs had traditions of hospitality, as regarded their
persecutors, and much more in favor of their benefactors. Napoleon was
ashamed to persist; and Francis II. remained at Rome as long as Pius IX.
was master there.

(M95) It was quite natural that Napoleon III. should entertain the idea
that he was born to found empires. He had succeeded in establishing one on
the ruins of a republic in the Old World. He now sought to build up
Imperial power side by side with a republic in the New. Mexico was
designed to be the seat of this empire; and, as that country greatly
needed government of some kind, the time was deemed opportune for carrying
into effect Napoleon's idea. The Imperial dignity was offered to the
Archduke Maximilian of