The Pope himself, however, showed affability to the French priest, whose genius was an honour to the Catholic Church. "What work of art," he asked M. de Lamennais, "has impressed you most?" "The _Moses_ of Michael Angelo," replied the priest. "Very well," replied Gregory XVI.; "then I will show you something which no one sees or which very few indeed, even of the specially favoured, see at Rome." Whilst saying this, the great white-haired old man entered a sort of recess enclosed by curtains, and returned holding in his arms a miniature replica in silver of the _Moses_ done by Michael Angelo himself. The Abbé de Lamennais admired it, bowed and withdrew, accompanied by the two cardinals who guarded the entrance to that chamber. He was compelled to acknowledge the gracious reception he had been accorded by the Holy Father; but, in all conscience, he had not come all the way from Paris to Rome just to see the statuette of Moses! It was a most complete disillusionment. He shook the dust of Rome off his feet, the dust of graves, and returned to Paris. After a long silence, when the affair of _l'Avenir_ seemed buried in the excavations of the Holy See, Rome spoke: she condemned the doctrines of the men who had tried to reunite Christianity to Liberty. The distress of the Abbé de Lamennais was profound. The shepherd being smitten, the sheep scattered, the news of censure had scarcely had time to reach La Chesnaie before the disciples were seized with terror and took to flight. M. de Lamennais remained alone in the old deserted château, in melancholy silence, broken only by the murmur of the great oak trees and the plaintive song of birds. Soon, even this retreat was taken from him, and he woke one day to find himself ruined by the failure of a bookseller to whom he had given his note of hand. Then the late editor of _l'Avenir_ began his voyage through bitter waters; anguish of soul prevented his feeling his poverty, which was extreme; his furniture, books, all were sold. Twice he bowed his head submissively under the hand of the Head of the Church, and twice he raised it, each time sadder than before, each time more indomitable, more convinced that the human mind, progress, reason, the conscience could not be wrong. It was not without profound heart-rendings that he separated himself from the articles of belief of his youth, from his career of priesthood and of tranquil obedience and from great and powerful harmony; in a word, from everything that he had upheld previously; but the new spirit had, in Biblical language, gripped him by the hair commanding him to "go forward!" It was then, in silence, in the midst of persecutions which even his gentleness was unable to disarm, in a small room in Paris, furnished with only a folding-bed, a table and two chairs, that the Abbé de Lamennais wrote his _Paroles d'un Croyant._ The manuscript lay for a year in the author's portfolio; placed several times in the hands of the editor Renduel, withdrawn,