bt among true believers, the confusion of a _sauve-qui-peut_, which by
and by must lead to inevitable defeat. It is cowardice, the worst form of
cowardice, abandonment of one's weapons in order that one may retreat the
more speedily, shame of oneself, assumption of a mask in the hope of
deceiving the enemy, penetrating into his camp, and overcoming him by
treachery! No, no, form is everything in a traditional and immutable
religion, which for eighteen hundred years has been, is now, and till the
end of time will be the very law of God!"

The Cardinal's feelings so stirred him that he was unable to remain
seated, and began to walk about the little room. And it was the whole
reign, the whole policy of Leo XIII which he discussed and condemned.
"Unity too," he continued, "that famous unity of the Christian Church
which his Holiness talks of bringing about, and his desire for which
people turn to his great glory, why, it is only the blind ambition of a
conqueror enlarging his empire without asking himself if the new nations
that he subjects may not disorganise, adulterate, and impregnate his old
and hitherto faithful people with every error. What if all the
schismatical nations on returning to the Catholic Church should so
transform it as to kill it and make it a new Church? There is only one
wise course, which is to be what one is, and that firmly. Again, isn't
there both shame and danger in that pretended alliance with the democracy
which in itself gives the lie to the ancient spirit of the papacy? The
right of kings is divine, and to abandon the monarchical principle is to
set oneself against God, to compound with revolution, and harbour a
monstrous scheme of utilising the madness of men the better to establish
one's power over them. All republics are forms of anarchy, and there can
be no more criminal act, one which must for ever shake the principle of
authority, order, and religion itself, than that of recognising a
republic as legitimate for the sole purpose of indulging a dream of
impossible conciliation. And observe how this bears on the question of
the temporal power. He continues to claim it, he makes a point of no
surrender on that question of the restoration of Rome; but in reality,
has he not made the loss irreparable, has he not definitively renounced
Rome, by admitting that nations have the right to drive away their kings
and live like wild beasts in the depths of the forest?"

All at once the Cardinal stoppe