was not on the side of infallibility.

Meantime the bishops of several nations selected those among their
countrymen whom they recommended as candidates. The Germans and
Hungarians, above forty in number, assembled for this purpose under the
presidency of Cardinal Schwarzenberg; and their meetings were continued,
and became more and more important, as those who did not sympathise with
the opposition dropped away. The French were divided into two groups,
and met partly at Cardinal Mathieu's, partly at Cardinal Bonnechose's. A
fusion was proposed, but was resisted, in the Roman interest, by
Bonnechose. He consulted Cardinal Antonelli, and reported that the Pope
disliked large meetings of bishops. Moreover, if all the French had met
in one place, the opposition would have had the majority, and would have
determined the choice of the candidates. They voted separately; and the
Bonnechose list was represented to foreign bishops as the united choice
of the French episcopate. The Mathieu group believed that this had been
done fraudulently, and resolved to make their complaint to the Pope; but
Cardinal Mathieu, seeing that a storm was rising, and that he would be
called on to be the spokesman of his friends, hurried away to spend
Christmas at Besancon. All the votes of his group were thrown away. Even
the bishop of Grenoble, who had obtained twenty-nine votes at one
meeting, and thirteen at the other, was excluded from the Commission. It
was constituted as the managers of the election desired, and the first
trial of strength appeared to have annihilated the opposition. The force
under entire control of the court could be estimated from the number of
votes cast blindly for candidates not put forward by their own
countrymen, and unknown to others, who had therefore no recommendation
but that of the official list. According to this test Rome could dispose
of 550 votes.

The moment of this triumph was chosen for the production of an act
already two months old, by which many ancient censures were revoked, and
many were renewed. The legislation of the Middle Ages and of the
sixteenth century appointed nearly two hundred cases by which
excommunication was incurred _ipso facto_, without inquiry or sentence.
They had generally fallen into oblivion, or were remembered as instances
of former extravagance; but they had not been abrogated, and, as they
were in part defensible, they were a trouble to timorous consciences.
There was reason t