The right of proposing motions has been made illusory by the composition of the Commission appointed for examining them, and the arrangement for making the permission to bring them forward dependent on the pleasure of the Pope. And thus great uneasiness, not to say exasperation, prevails among the 200 Bishops. And on the other hand, the Pope has been for several weeks past in a chronic state of mingled indignation and astonishment at finding so many Bishops—even at Rome, in his own immediate neighbourhood—daring to think and say the contrary to what he, Pius IX., thinks and says. This rebellion of thought has not indeed yet been directly and openly manifested in the Council Hall. But when the _Schema de Ecclesiâ_, and with it Infallibility, really come to be discussed, then even within the sacred precincts of St. Peter’s, and close to the Tomb of the Apostles—which the Pope had assured himself would inspire very different thoughts into the Bishops’ heads—bold utterances of contradiction will be heard, and will resound throughout Europe, for “publicity discloses the Acheron of the Council.” The expected and decisive sealing up of 3000 mouths is at an end once for all, and even that most correct and devoted of Romanists, Veuillot, has declared in his _Univers_ that such a silence of the grave is impossible, especially for the French, and has accordingly blurted out such of the secrets of the Hall as seemed to him desirable without scruple. Nor have the authorities taken it at all ill of him. But to hear Bishops publicly in Council, and in the hearing of the Papal Legates, proclaiming views diametrically opposed to those of the Pope—and that, too, in a question so fundamental and so completely dominating the whole future life of the Church—would be a scandal which must be averted even at the heaviest cost. Some time before the Indiction of the Council, in 1866, Pius himself formally asserted, in the most significant terms, and in presence of a numerous assemblage of foreigners who had come to offer him their homage, his true attitude towards the world and the Bishops, whether assembled or dispersed. He spoke in French, and in words carefully prepared beforehand, and I give the speech precisely as it was reported, with the reporters’ names subscribed, in the _Monde_, the _Union_, and the _Observateur Catholique_ of April 1, 1866, p. 357:—“_Seul_, malgré mon indignité, _je suis le successeur des apôtres_, le vicaire de Jésus Christ; _seul_, j’ai _la mission de conduire et de diriger la barque de Pierre, je suis la voie, la vérité, et la vie._ Il faut bien qu’on le sache, afin de ne pas se laisser tromper et aventurer par la parole de gens qui se disent Catholiques, mais qui veulent et enseignent tout autre chose que ce que veut et enseigne l’Église.”