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Washington becomes annually more and more formidable. The fact is, we have financial and political troubles enough at home to keep our rulers pretty well occupied for a few years without going abroad to borrow trouble. Motley, I hear, is very much disgusted with the government for withdrawing the Alabama business from London and transferring it to Washg., but the public generally approves the step.

What you have written us from time to time of your daughter and new son has interested us very much. I do not think it was a great calamity for him to be defeated as a candidate for Parliament. He is pretty young for Parliamentary life, and a few years more of study, observation, and reflection can do him no harm. Remember me cordially to all your circle and especially to your

wife.

Your very sincere friend

HENRY MOREAU TO BIGELOW

Translation

PARIS, October 22, 1869.

My dear Friend:

You describe so well to me the advantages of repose and independence that I quite understand the determination you have made to leave such a brilliant and attractive post, but at the same time so laborious a one, as that of editor of the New York Times. I rejoice specially in that you will continue your correspondence, which is so agreeable to me, and realize your project of returning soon to see your friends in Europe. You see that my work on Mr. Berryer continues. I hope that it will require less waiting for than you believe. At this moment I am occupied in collecting the documents. I can do no more, and I am resorting to good sources. I have not, however, all the facilities you suppose. The papers are in jealous hands, and not especially intelligent ones, this being between ourselves. There seems to be fear of revelations, and as they know my independence, they have evinced some hesitation in letting me have the communications that I desired. On my side, it did not suit me, on account of the affectionate confidence with which Mr. Berryer honored me, to

persist much with people who knew him little or not at all. I therefore found myself momentarily deprived of some sources of information, and to supply it addressed myself to the particular friends of Mr. Berryer, from whom I gather many interesting details, for he was a prolific letter-writer. But you, will recognize that this sort of work requires time. When I shall have collected my materials, I will consecrate my professional vacations to this work, which I have much at heart and which is singularly facilitated by the intimate knowledge that I had of the man.

You flatter, I think sincerely, our Emperor with being the possessor of penetration which is altogether foreign to him. He betrays the serious symptoms of disease that are precipitating his decrepitude. Moreover, his health is perhaps still less compromised than that of the Empire. You do him too much honor in supposing that he has changed the skin of the lion for that of the fox. He is still much embarrassed, and while recognizing on the one hand that his prestige has vanished, he nevertheless will not frankly renounce personal power. Hence the marches and countermarches which are so many surprises for the country; impairing his authority and securing neither merit nor profit from any of his concessions; for every one knows that those concessions are wrenched from him and yielded on indefinite and unwilling conditions.

We did not endure the octroi of the Charter from our legitimate kings; how could we accept with gratitude, partial and forced restitutions of our property by the one who took it violently from us so short a time ago. If you were here, you would also see that the hopes and the previsions of the adversaries of Bonapartism are entirely ratified by the fears of his partisans. The emperor is more isolated than ever between those who want a liberal goverment and the senators who see their places and their persons in peril. The only element, I will not say of strength, the word would be out of place -but of durability, that the imperial government still has is the disruption of parties which are as divided as the religious sects with you. The opposition, composed of elements the most heterogeneous, has no more political programme than the government. It is at the same time disor

ganized and led by a minority of the country composed of the disclassed, turbulent good-for-nothings; enemies of all order and of all government. If the democratic opposition would disconnect itself openly and energetically from this degrading

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patronage, it would no longer frighten that bewildered mass without a compass, trembling for its interests, which consists of the great majority of the country, and it would have everybody with it. But to arrive there we should have to have men, and that is what we do not possess. Let us hope that Providence will work in our favor, but we are yet very far from the goal. Instead of having men we have only indifferents; narrow and stubborn minds; and Clément Duvernois, auri sacra fames. The century of Louis Napoleon differs from that of Louis XIV in that the latter counted upon Corneille, Molière, Racine, and Colbert, the other on such as Duvernois, Michel Chevalier, Drouyn de Lhuys, and Rouher.

Good-bye, my dear friend, present my respects to Madame Bigelow, my friendly remembrances to those dear children, and believe in my most affectionate sentiments.

I

V

FATHER HYACINTHE1

HAD received on the 3rd of June a letter from Father Hyacinthe in which he said that he had just returned from a two weeks' visit sous le toit du grand théologien Catholique et anti-Romaniste (Döllinger), and added:

"I return thence armed with renewed resolution for the great battles which are impending. The Council of the Vatican will finish nothing and attempt everything. It will provoke great changes in the religious destinies of the world. More than ever I am a Catholic, determined to remain faithful to my church while battling energetically against its abuses; laboring to unite divided Christian communities. I wait in the silence of my study and prayer. I am not in haste, but although without any personal ambition, I have an interior assurance that my hour will come."

Had Loyson profited by a two weeks' visit with Döllinger before instead of after he took upon his own shoulders exclusively the task of reforming the Catholic Church, it may be fairly presumed that the chivalric monk's remaining life would have been more useful and certainly less accidenté.

HENRY MOREAU TO BIGELOW

P. S. Your old acquaintance of Notre Dame, Father Hyacinthe, is going to America, and he has been ruined by the praises

Charles Loyson, named Father Hyacinthe in 1863 by the order of Barefooted Carmelites, of which he had taken the vows. In 1869 he was forty-two years of age. He was a graduate of the theological seminary of St. Sulpice and for the last four or five years had been a favorite pulpit orator in Paris.

2October 22, 1869 ante.

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which he has received. He has much talent, he is a good man but the master quality of mind, good sense, is not his strong point. He amuses people with benedictions by one of the friends of Garibaldi, Mr. Villamarina.

On the 18th day of October, 1869, the superior of the monastery of Barefooted Carmelites in Paris landed from a French steamer in New York. Instead of wearing the usual garb of his order, however, he was clothed in the ordinary dress of a private gentleman. Instead of availing himself of the hospitality provided in most large cities for religious mendicant orders, he drove with his baggage directly to one of our popular hotels. His arrival was promptly telegraphed to the extremities of the continent. It was the subject of comment in every newspaper in our land. His hotel was thronged by reporters. He was deluged with invitations. Shop windows and illustrated journals radiated his portrait. The mails were loaded with expressions of interest and sympathy for him. In fact, had Pius IX himself executed the purpose at one time attributed to him of taking refuge in the United States, he could hardly have produced a greater sensation.

The day Loyson left Paris he renounced the position he held as Superior of the Convent of the Carmelites, and laid aside the garb of his order without permission, thus provoking the solemn penalties of excommunication from his Church. Though I heard him preach once at Notre Dame in Paris, I had never met him personally; but a day or two after his arrival I called upon him, largely for the purpose of rescuing him from interviewers, a class of press functionaries with which he had never had any experience and all of whose questions he inferred it was his duty to answer, not knowing a word of English and very much embarrassed by the few who knew any French. I saw at once that the greatest kindness I could do him was to get him out of the city, and accordingly I invited him to come up with me to the country. He was only too happy to accept my invitation, and in a day or two joined my family at The Squirrels where he tarried with us for a week or more. During his stay I think we spent about eighteen hours out of every twenty-four discussing the causes and history of his rupture with his Church, and in speculating upon the future which he had to confront.