subject during nearly an hour. Only it must be said that they do not
agree in the matter, for one begs me to do things which the other will
not have me do on any account."

Pierre realised that the conversation was straying away from his book,
but he remembered having promised the Viscount that if he should see the
Pope he would make an attempt to obtain from him a decisive expression of
opinion on the famous question as to whether the working-class guilds or
corporations should be free or obligatory, open or closed. And the
unhappy Viscount, kept in Paris by the gout, had written the young priest
letter after letter on the subject, whilst his rival the Baron, availing
himself of the opportunity offered by the international pilgrimage,
endeavoured to wring from the Pope an approval of his own views, with
which he would have returned in triumph to France. Pierre conscientiously
desired to keep his promise, and so he answered: "Your Holiness knows
better than any of us in which direction true wisdom lies. Monsieur de
Fouras is of opinion that salvation, the solution of the labour question,
lies simply in the re-establishment of the old free corporations, whilst
Monsieur de la Choue desires the corporations to be obligatory, protected
by the state and governed by new regulations. This last conception is
certainly more in agreement with the social ideas now prevalent in
France. Should your Holiness condescend to express a favourable opinion
in that sense, the young French Catholic party would certainly know how
to turn it to good result, by producing quite a movement of the working
classes in favour of the Church."

In his quiet way Leo XIII responded: "But I cannot. Frenchmen always ask
things of me which I cannot, will not do. What I will allow you to say on
my behalf to Monsieur de la Choue is, that though I cannot content him I
have not contented Monsieur de Fouras. He obtained from me nothing beyond