An incident that occurred in the course of the dispute shows--if proof were necessary--that Nicholas acted on a sincere conviction of right. In 863 Lothair appointed Archbishop Günther's brother, Hildwin, to the See of Cambrai, and Hincmar rightly protested that the man was unworthy. He appealed to Nicholas, and, although his appeal reached the Pope at a time when he was threatening to depose Hincmar, and that prelate still evaded his orders, Nicholas at once discharged a shower of his menacing letters[159] in support of Hincmar and did not rest until Lothair abandoned Hildwin. Warped as it was, at times, by a too exalted conception of the authority of his See, Nicholas had, nevertheless, a rigid sentiment of justice, and it was his supreme aim to make that anarchic world bow to moral no less than ecclesiastical law. He had not yet reached the end of his conflict with the great representative of the prelate-nobles. Hincmar's predecessor, Ebbo, had conferred orders after he had been deposed, and a council held at Soissons in 853 had suspended these clerics from the exercise of their functions. Benedict III. and Nicholas himself had expressed a qualified approval of this council, but the _Forged Decretals_ were now circulating in France, and one of the suspended clerics, Wulfad,--possibly encouraged by the success of Rothrad,--appealed to Rome. Once more Nicholas curtly ordered Hincmar either to reinstate the clerics or to summon a new council, to which the Pope would send legates, at Soissons. The council was held, and the French bishops endeavoured by means of a compromise to save their own dignity yet avoid a quarrel: they decided to reinstate the clerics as an act of grace. This evasion drew from the Pope some of the sorriest letters in his register. Not only in a most harsh and offensive letter to the Archbishop,[160] but even in a letter to the bishops,[161] he accused Hincmar of fraud, insisted that the _acta_ of the earlier Soissons council had been submitted in a dishonest form to his "divinely inspired" predecessor and himself, and, on the pretext that Hincmar was wearing his pallium on improper occasions, threatened to punish his "pride" and "vainglory" by a withdrawal of that distinction. He ordered them to hold a new council. Nicholas died before the report of this council reached Rome, and his indulgent successor exculpated Hincmar. But the meekness with which those terrible letters were received is a measure of the advance of the Papacy.