who visited the Department of the Marne in the month of
July 1887.

When the 'moral unity' men began their sinister work in 1880, the
Cardinal Archbishop of Reims was earnestly urging upon the Holy See the
beatification of the great French pontiff, Urban II., the disciple,
friend and successor of Hildebrand, and the canonisation of Jeanne
d'Arc, 'that whitest lily in the shield of France, with heart of virgin
gold.'

On July 14, 1881, Leo XIII. confirmed the beatification of Urban II. and
fixed of course the date of his death, July 29, as his place in the
calendar of Church festivals. In July 1882 a solemn Triduum appointed by
a Papal Rescript was celebrated with extraordinary pomp in the Cathedral
of Reims.

Two Cardinals, one the special Legate of the Pope, more than twenty
bishops, several abbots of the great Benedictine Order of which Urban
II. was a member, and hundreds of the clergy from all parts of France,
were present. The Cardinal Legate was attended by Monsignor Cataldi, so
long and so well known to all foreigners in Rome as the master of the
ceremonies to the Pope. The Cathedral was crowded. 'What I should like
to know,' said a quiet shrewd master workman who described to me the
effect produced by the scene in the Cathedral, 'what I should like to
know is why the Catholics of Reims have not the right upon such
occasions to escort the Legate of the Head of the Church from the
railway station to the Cathedral with a procession and with music and
with banners? Is that liberty I ask you?'

The question seems to me natural enough, particularly as I see that only
the other day the Freemasons at Grenoble were permitted to force
themselves, marching in a body with all their regalia and their emblems,
into the funeral procession of a Prefect who was not a member of their
order at all, and against the protest of the Bishop of Grenoble, who had
been asked by the family of the dead man to give him the burial rites of
the Church. That the Freemasons like other citizens should attend the
funeral as individuals the Bishop was ready to admit, but he not
unnaturally declined to acquiesce in the deliberate parade on such an
occasion of a body openly and undisguisedly hostile to Christianity in
all its forms.

Without a procession, however, the Triduum of the great Pope of the
Crusades was a great success in 1882. It led to the organisation of a
movement for erecting a magnificent monument to the memory of Urban II.
at