of the addresses was appended a singularly great number
of signatures. The Bishop of Nevers presented one with two millions of
names.

A few days later, 20th September, the Holy Father had to lament the death
of his brother, Count Gaetano Mastai. So little, however, was his grief
respected by Victor Emmanuel and his government, that their cannon were
heard booming joyously in honor of the violent occupation of the city. All
Rome was indignant. Patrician and plebeian, all citizens alike, hastened
to the Vatican, protesting and presenting addresses of condolence. The
_Riforma_ (a Roman journal) said, on the occasion: "After two years'
sojourn Italy was still as much a stranger as on the first day, so that
there was no appearance of friendliness, but rather of a city that still
groaned under a military occupation, which it bore with the greatest
impatience."

MORE SPOLIATION AND DESECRATION--NO RECONCILIATION.

Robbery, wholesale and sacrilegious, was now the order of the day at Rome.
Throughout the city convents were closed and sequestrated, libraries were
confiscated, and often dilapidated in transferring them from one place to
another. Religious men and religious women were driven from their homes
and brutally searched on their thresholds lest they should carry away with
them anything that belonged to them. These religious people obtained,
every month, as indemnification, twenty-five centimes each daily, and the
aged forty centimes; but they were paid only when the treasury was in a
condition to pay them, and this was not the case every month. The poor and
the infirm, no longer sustained by Catholic charity, encumbered the
hospitals or were associated with the knights of industry, who swarmed
from the prisons of Italy. It was in vain that the police were doubled.
Robberies increased in the same proportion. The people in such
circumstances could not but ask themselves what sacrifices were laid upon
himself by the usurping king, who was now the master of the domains of six
Italian princes who had never allowed their subjects to go without bread.
Before the end of the year 1873, the number of religious houses that were
taken, in whole or in part, from their legitimate proprietors, was over
one hundred. The intervention of diplomacy saved for a time the Roman
College, which was essentially international and not Roman, as formerly no
clerks of the city of Rome could attend it, and as it was endowed solely
by foreign kings