The death of Cardinal Reisach is considered here an irreparable loss, and above all by the Pope himself, whose confidence he enjoyed more than any other Cardinal. He had the greatest share in preparing the propositions laid before the Council, and had he been able to make his influence felt, he would certainly have given powerful support to the new dogmas. He passed here for a man of comprehensive learning and great penetration. His friends used to commend his friendly and genial nature. For us Germans he was a sort of phenomenon, a show specimen of his kind, so to speak. In him we saw how far a German can go in the process of being Italianized, so radically was his whole being metamorphosed into that of the Italian _prelatura_, and the peculiar circle of thought in which Roman clerics and dignitaries move had become a second nature to him. What distinguishes a Roman Prelate is, first, that liturgical endowment—that willing absorption in the _cæremonia_, as the old Romans partly originated and partly borrowed it from the Etruscans—and next, the faculty of calculating quickly and surely what loss or gain in power and influence the settlement of any ecclesiastical question will bring. Reisach was eminent in both respects. No one excelled him in reverence for every line of the rubric and every ceremonial detail, as practised here. And again, in his dislike for German science, literature, and theology, he had become a thorough Italian, so that his ignorance of even the most famous intellectual products of Germany was quite fabulous. To him principally were addressed the denunciations of German works not composed exactly to the taste of the Roman Jesuits, and it was he who arranged with the Congregation of the Index the censures pronounced during recent years on the works of learned Germans. Thus then there is a niche left vacant in the Roman temple of heroes. Another Reisach will not so easily be found; for it is given to very few men to transmute their originally single nature into the form of the Siamese twins, inhabited by two souls, a German and an Italian.(27) If the vacant Hat is not to be the price of desertion from the ranks of the Opposition, but the reward of past services, three German Bishops may put in a claim for it, Martin, Senestrey, and Fessler. In fiery zeal for the good cause, restless activity, and unquestioning devotion, they are on a par, and were all Germany like-minded with this trio, the great sacrifice—“il sacrificio del intelletto”—so variously commended by the _Civiltà_, would have long since been accomplished, and the Jesuits might hold up the Germans as a model for all nations to follow. Meanwhile for the moment Fessler occupies the most conspicuous position.