distinctly implied, since the work was never placed upon the
Index, and could not have been published at Venice, stamped as it
was and registered with the privileges of the University, without
the consent of the Vatican.

The memory of Father Paul seemed likely now to be overwhelmed.
There was no longer a Republic of Venice to guard the noble
traditions of his life and service. The book was recommended and
spread far and wide by preachers and confessors.

But at last came a day of judgment. The director of the Venetian
archives discovered and had the courage to announce that the work
was a pious fraud of the vilest type; that it was never written
by Fontanini, but that it was simply made up out of the old
scurrilous work of Vaerini, suppressed over thirty years before.
As to the correspondence served up as supplementary to the
biography, it was concocted from letters already published, with
the addition of Jesuitical interpolations and of forgeries.[1]
Now came the inevitable reaction, and with it the inevitable
increase of hatred for Austrian rule and the inevitable question,
how, if the Pope is the infallible teacher of the world in all
matters pertaining to faith and morals, could he virtually
approve this book, and why did he not, by virtue of his divine
inerrancy, detect the fraud and place its condemnation upon the
Index. The only lasting effect of the book, then, was to revive
the memory of Father Paul's great deeds and to arouse Venetian
pride in them. The fearful scar on his face in the portrait spoke
more eloquently than ever, and so it was that, early in the
nineteenth century, many men of influence joined in proposing a
suitable and final interment for the poor bones, which had seven