"But the sovereign who is entreating me to do something, is
an eldest son of the Church. He has rendered us great
services. He still protects us constantly. What would become
of us if he abandoned us?"

"Don't be alarmed," says the Cardinal. "I'll arrange the matter
diplomatically." And he sits down, and writes an invariable note, in a
diplomatically tortuous style, which may thus be summed up:--

"We want your soldiers, and not your advice, seeing that we
are infallible. If you were to show any symptom of doubting
that infallibility, and if you attempted to force anything
upon us, even our preservation, we would fold our wings
around our countenances, we would raise the palms of
martyrdom, and we should become an object of compassion to
all the Catholics in the universe. You know we have in your
country forty thousand men who are at liberty to say
everything, and whom you pay with your own money to plead
our cause. They shall preach to your subjects, that you are
tyrannizing over the Holy Father, and we shall set your
country in a blaze without appearing to touch it."




CHAPTER II.

NECESSITY OF THE TEMPORAL POWER.