CHAPTER XIII.
POLITICAL SEVERITY.
It is admitted that the Popes have always been remarkable for a senile indulgence and goodness.

I do not pretend to deny the assertions of M.
de Brosses and M.de Tournon that this government is at once the mildest, the worst, and the most absolute in Europe.
And yet Sixtus V., a great Pope, was a still greater executioner.

That man of God delivered over to the gallows a Pepoli of Bologna, who had bestowed upon him a kick instead of a piece of bread when he was a mendicant friar.
And yet Gregory XVI., in our own times, granted a dispensation of age to a minor for the sake of having him legally executed.
And yet the punishment of the wooden horse was revived four years ago by the mild Cardinal Antonelli.
And yet the Pontifical State is the only one in Europe in which the barbarous practice of placing a price upon a man's head is still in use.
Never mind.

Since, after all, the Pontifical State is that in which the most daring crimes and the most open assassinations have the greatest chance of being committed with perfect impunity, I will admit, with M.de Brosses and M.de Tournon, that it is the mildest in Europe.

I am about to examine with you the application of this mildness to political matters.
Nine years ago Pius IX.