Now that she no longer expects any temporal assistance from the State, the church does as she pleases in matters of doctrine. Not only doos she use her influence sub rosa as in hampering the liquidators' operations, but she speaks her mind very openly when ber good offices are required on behalf of her political antagonists. When the remains of M. Guyot-Dessaigne, the Minister of Justice, who died suddenly in a lobby of the Senate on New Year's eve, were taken to t'lermont Ferrand for interment, the Bishop refused to grant Christian banal, the deceased minister having been excommunicated for the share he took in bringing about the separation of Church and State. Alter prolonged _negotis the prelate at length consented to allow a priest to perform the ceremony known as giving absolution, at the deceased's ud to follow the remains to the cemetery, but the Bishop persisted in prohibiting the faneral mass, for which the nave and choir of a church had been already bung with black. There was the customary assemblage of official personages, display of troops, and so on, but the religious observances usual on such occasions were reduced to the narrowest limits. The most. curious part of the business is the surprise excited by the Bishop's attitude. Official France does not yet vinces respectively. seem to realize that the ecclesiastical worm will turn, It will be a very long time before the habit of considering tholic cult as x part of the body
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.