truth!

For, sure enough, if once the law of veracity be acknowledged as
the rule for human things, there will not anywhere be want of
work for the reformer; in very few places do human things adhere
quite closely to that law! Here was the Papa of Christendom
proclaiming that such was actually the case;--whereupon all over
Christendom such results as we have seen. The Sicilians, I
think, were the first notable body that set about applying this
new strange rule sanctioned by the general Father; they said to
themselves, We do not by the law of veracity belong to Naples and
these Neapolitan Officials; we will, by favor of Heaven and the
Pope, be free of these. Fighting ensued; insurrection, fiercely
maintained in the Sicilian Cities; with much bloodshed, much
tumult and loud noise, vociferation extending through all
newspapers and countries. The effect of this, carried abroad by
newspapers and rumor, was great in all places; greatest perhaps
in Paris, which for sixty years past has been the City of
Insurrections. The French People had plumed themselves on being,
whatever else they were not, at least the chosen "soldiers of
liberty," who took the lead of all creatures in that pursuit, at
least; and had become, as their orators, editors and litterateurs
diligently taught them, a People whose bayonets were sacred, a
kind of Messiah People, saving a blind world in its own despite,
and earning for themselves a terrestrial and even celestial glory
very considerable indeed. And here were the wretched
down-trodden populations of Sicily risen to rival them, and
threatening to take the trade out of their hand.

No doubt of it, this hearing continually of the very Pope's glory