langer committed suicide in Brussels at the grave of
his mistress, most Frenchmen merely gave a sigh of relief at the memory
of the dangers they had experienced not so long before.

The International Exposition of 1889 afforded a breathing spell in the
midst of political anxieties, and helped, by its evidence of the
Republic's prosperity, to weaken Boulanger's cause. But unsettled social
and religious problems remained troublesome. The successive cabinets
after the Floquet Ministry, and following the general election of 1889,
pursued a policy of "Republican concentration," combining Moderate and
Radical elements, disappearing often without important motives, and
replaced by cabinets of approximately the same coloring. The Clerical
Party was hand-in-glove with the Royalists and the Boulangists. It took
advantage of governmental instability to try to undermine the Republic,
but its own harmony of purpose was in due time diminished by the new
policy of Leo XIII. That astute Italian diplomat was himself
temperamentally an Opportunist. He conceived the idea of controlling
France by advances to the Republic and by feigning to accept it in order
to get hold of its policies, especially the educational and military
laws. He realized, too, the harm done to the Vatican by the stubbornness
of many French Catholics. He felt the necessity of making amends for the
behavior of the Catholic Royalists in the Boulanger affair. Certain
prelates, including the Archbishop of Aix, Monseigneur Gouthe-Soulard,
attacked the Government violently at the end of 1891 in connection with
disturbances by French pilgrims to Rome who had manifested in favor of
the Pope and written "Vive le Pape-Roi!" at the tomb of Victor Emmanuel.
The French Catholics tended to resent the interference of the Pope, but
the latter, who had for some months received the support of Cardinal
Lavigerie, Archbishop of Algiers and Primate of Africa, tried to bring
pressure on the leaders of the French clergy. In February, 1892, as a
rejoinder to a manifesto by five French cardinals, came his famous
encyclical letter advocating the established order of things. "The civil
power considered as such is from God and always from God....
Consequently, when new governments representing this new power are
constituted, to accept them is not only permitted but demanded, or even
imposed, by the needs of the social good." This encyclical was followed
by a letter to the French cardinals in May