njurious to their schemes. Later, when there was no hope of recovery,
anxious that the king should have the credit of being at peace with the
Church, they allowed his own chaplain, the Rev. Signor Azenio, to approach
his bed-side. This worthy priest, being fully authorized, heard the
confession of King Victor Emmanuel, and administered to him the Sacraments
of the Church. As the most Holy Sacrament was borne to the monarch's
deathbed, Prince Humbert, Princess Margaret, and, together with them, ten
ministers and dignitaries of the Court, bearing lighted torches,
accompanied the priest: and as Victor Emmanuel received the Viaticum and
Extreme Unction, they all fell upon their knees. (9th January, 1878.) This
conclusion, so consoling to the departing soul, was gall and wormwood to
the worldly ministers. The founder of United Italy, before he could have
the benefit of the last sacred rites, prayed to be pardoned all his crimes
against the Sovereign Pontiff and the Church. By acknowledging and
condemning his faults, he also condemned the unhallowed work which was
forwarded by so much usurpation and sacrilege. The Christian-like end of
Victor Emmanuel did not meet the views of the ministers. (_Osservatore
Romano_ of 10th January.) Accordingly, they endeavored immediately to
lessen its effect on the public mind. Their journals, unable to deny the
truth, even acknowledging the benefit they had by the king's confession
and communion, cunningly labored to counteract the same by the grossest
misrepresentation. They related that the king, at the moment of his death,
had spoken both as a Christian and an infidel revolutionist. They made him
thus retract his retractation. "In all that I have done, I am conscious of
having always fulfilled my duties as a citizen and a prince, and of having
done nothing against the religion of my ancestors." As his conscience was
thus at ease, for what did he beg pardon of the Sovereign Pontiff and the
Church? Of what could he repent who acknowledged no sin?

_L'Osservatore Romano_, in reply, reiterated all that it had already
stated on the highest authority. "Let there be an end, once for all," said
this excellent journal, "to the profane language which dares rashly to
intervene between the dying man and his God, of whom the priest is the
representative. The Church, appealed to on so short a notice, and in the
awful hour of the death agony, mercifully extends her hand to him who is
about to approach the