In the same neighbourhood there lived another priest whom the Archbishop had dismissed for living in the same house with his large family, and for engaging in commerce; and Monseigneur also applied to the Government to have him expelled from the republic. The curé appealed for protection to the French Legation, saying that he should be completely ruined if forced suddenly to abandon the country. The representative of France, thinking he ought to have time granted him to settle his affairs, stated the case to the Haytian Minister of Public Worship, who agreeing with him, remarked, “Il est peut-être mauvais prêtre, mais bon père de famille.” There was a priest who formerly lived at La Coupe, the summer resort of the inhabitants of Port-au-Prince--a dapper Parisian--who was perfectly astonished by the accounts the peasantry gave of one of his predecessors; and I could gather from him that, short of being present at human sacrifices, the man would join in any feast given by the negroes in a district as full of Vaudoux worshippers as any in the island, and his immorality equalled his other qualities.[16] Several of these ignoble priests were Corsicans who had been driven from their country on account of crime. For fear, however, any one should consider these statements to be exaggerated, I will add to the testimony given by the Archbishop an extract from a speech of M. Valmy Lizaire, Minister of Public Worship (1863):-- “N’éprouve-t-on pas un sentiment pénible et douloureux en contemplant l’état de notre église depuis sa naissance jusqu’à ce jour, en voyant la dignité du saint ministère souvent menacée et compromise par des inconnus sans qualités, par quelque moines la plus part du temps échappés de leur convents et venant offrir jusqu’à chez nous le dangereux spectacle de leurs dérèglements? Je ne ferai point l’horreur à plaisir en essayant de retracer içi tout ce que nos annales religieuses renferment de désordres et d’excès. Il suffit de dire que nulle part, peut-être dans la chrétienté, le clergé n’a profané autant qu’en Haïti le sacerdoce dont il est revêtu.” At length the scandal became so intolerable that the Government of Hayti determined to negotiate a concordat at Rome, and after many difficulties had been overcome, it was signed in 1860, and the Pope sent as his delegate Monseigneur Testard de Cosquer to bring it into practice. He was one of the most pleasing of men, handsome, eloquent, and the romantic but terrible episode related of him as the cause of his leaving the army and entering into holy orders rendered him an object of great interest to the fair sex. He brought with him a body of French clergy, whom he gradually installed in the different parishes of the republic, not, however, without a difficult struggle with those who formerly held possession and disgraced the Church.