Praise and
honour are lavished on the most villainous of men and actions, while at
the same time endurance in the faith and even episcopal resolution in
maintaining the holy rights of that faith, and its provident blessings,
are stigmatized with a strange audacity, by the names of hypocrisy,
fanaticism, and perversion of religion. He then went on to say, that
now, more than ever, it was high time to take vengeance in the name of
God, and that the vengeance of the priesthood and the Vicariate of Christ
Jesus consisted solely in prayer and supplication, that all might be
converted and live. That, moreover, the chief of all these evils was
only too truly the corruption of the heart and the perversion of the
intellect, and that this evil could only be overcome by the greatest of
miracles, which must be wrought by God and interceded from him by prayer.
After this, the Holy Father, in language which seemed inspired, as though
he were raised out of himself, exhorted all present, and especially the
young men destined to carry the faith to their distant countries."
Even amongst the audience, who all belonged more or less to the Papal
faction, the intemperate and injudicious character of this speech,
delivered in the presence of the French commander-in-chief, and the
allusions which could not but be intended for the Emperor Napoleon,
Cavour, and Victor Emmanuel, created great consternation, and was but
coldly received.
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