Even now there is a wish discernible among Cardinals like di Pietro, Corsi and Bilio, to discover some intermediate formula, while the party men, like Manning, Pie, Cullen, and all who have been concerned in the agitation and have staked their credit on its result, hold to the most uncompromising form, as laid down in the existing programme. The latter reckon on their overpowering preponderance of numbers, on the power of the Pope, and the dread of ecclesiastical methods of coercion, such as excommunication and the like, whereby all resistance will be certainly put down. On the other hand, the Cardinals and members of the Papal Cabinet just referred to prefer to set their hopes on the hazy views and yielding temper of many Bishops of the minority, and think that an ambiguous formula might serve at once to delude and divide them. Their watchword is “conciliazione, un partito di conciliazione.” But all their ingenuity is expended in the elaboration of a phrase which may contain in a somewhat allegorical and obscure form the infallibility and universal monarchy of the Pope. To this conciliatory section also belongs a man who understands the greatness of the danger clearly enough, and who so lately uttered words which have become notorious here: “This Pope began by destroying the State, and now will close his career by destroying the Church too.” Yet the speaker of these words does not scruple to use his high position and influence for actively furthering the undertakings which must lead to the catastrophe. It is impossible for outsiders to form anything like an adequate conception of the complication of views and plans and the multifarious activity of the Roman _prelatura_. Things happen which must appear incredible to every one who has heard of the proverbial skill and gift of accurate calculation possessed by the ruling clergy here. Thus a member of a powerful Order is sentenced to six years’ imprisonment by the Holy Office on account of an occurrence in a nunnery here, the convent being at the same time broken up and the nuns distributed over other convents. Yet after scarcely two years’ imprisonment this man, who is unhappily a German, is brought back here, and intrusted with the preparation of the draft decrees for the Council, and now the Court trusts to its favourite “segreto del S. Ufficio” for the cause of his sentence and of the dissolution of the convent not coming to the ears of the Bishops, but in vain. The matter has created too great a sensation, and the culprit is too well known.