Had it come from the ceremony which he had just beheld, from the frantic cry of servitude still ringing in his ears?
Had it come from the spectacle of that city beneath him, that city which suggested an embalmed queen still reigning amidst the dust of her tomb?
He knew not; but doubtless both had acted as factors, and at all events the light which fell upon his mind was complete: he felt that Catholicism could not exist without the temporal power, that it must fatally disappear whenever it should no longer be king over this earth.

A first reason of this lay in heredity, in the forces of history, the long line of the heirs of the Caesars, the popes, the great pontiffs, in whose veins the blood of Augustus, demanding the empire of the world, had never ceased to flow.

Though they might reside in the Vatican they had come from the imperial abodes on the Palatine, from the palace of Septimius Severus, and throughout the centuries their policy had ever pursued the dream of Roman mastery, of all the nations vanquished, submissive, and obedient to Rome.

If its sovereignty were not universal, extending alike over bodies and over souls, Catholicism would lose its _raison d'etre_; for the Church cannot recognise any empire or kingdom otherwise than politically--the emperors and the kings being purely and simply so many temporary delegates placed in charge of the nations pending the time when they shall be called upon to relinquish their trust.

All the nations, all humanity, and the whole world belong to the Church to whom they have been given by God.