The number of those who desire and aim at this complete divorce of Church and State is legion. Their view predominates in the French cabinet since Daru’s retirement, and most of them view what is going on in Rome with satisfaction and hope. The more frantic and insolent is the conduct of the Papalists, so much the better in their opinion, for so much easier and more painless will the separation be for civil society. To make papal infallibility and the Syllabus into dogmas is in their eyes a step which, far from hindering, one should wish to see thoroughly effected. When the Church is caught in this net, she must assume the full responsibility of all doctrines and principles established by any of the Popes, and she has herself pronounced judgment on their utter incompatibility with the whole existing order of society. The State can then no longer go hand in hand with her anywhere, and will dismiss her. It is impossible to be ignorant that this view is widely prevalent, and is rapidly and powerfully increasing. FORTY-THIRD LETTER. _Rome, April 30, 1870._—Now that the matter has gone so far, those about the Pope no longer make any secret of the fact that for many years—indeed from the beginning of his pontificate—he has formed the design of making papal infallibility an article of faith. A work has lately been distributed here, _Riflessioni d’un Teologo sopra la Riposta di Mgr. Dupanloup a Mgr. Arcivescovo di Malines_, Torino 1870. The writer says, “Could the Bishop of Orleans be ignorant that Pius IX. has always intended to define this dogma and condemn Gallicanism? All the acts of his pontificate have been directed to this end. Nay, we affirm distinctly that he believed himself to have received a special mission to define the two dogmas of papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception.(96) And as he is under the special guidance of the Holy Ghost, his will sufficiently establishes the opportuneness of this definition.”