“Oh, would that I could end this letter as I have commenced it, with words of joy and gladness, and how happy should I be, M. le Président, if I could associate your venerated name with the declaration of peace in the Church as I have associated it with the victories gained before our eyes by the spirit of authority over the spirit of discord. But, alas, it cannot be! I must bring to your notice a subject of great sorrow; must afflict your soul by the spectacle of a great grief. I shall accomplish an irresistible duty in bringing your mind to bear upon an open and bleeding wound which must be healed. It is to my interest to tell you certain painful truths, and to your interest to listen. My pastoral duty compels me to speak. Placed by the grace of the Sovereign Pontiff upon the See of the Blessed Saint Loup, successor as I am of so many holy apostles and vigilant pastors, should I be the legitimate heir of their devoted labours if I had not the courage to continue them? _Alii laboraverunt, et vos in labores eorum introistis_ (Ecc. viii. 9). It is therefore fitting that my feeble voice should uplift itself until it reach your ears. It is also fitting that you lend an attentive ear to my words, for the subject I am about to discuss is worthy the thought of a ruler. _Princeps vero ea, quæ digna sunt principe, cogitabit_ (Is. xxxii.). “But how can I broach the subject without immediately feeling myself overcome by overwhelming grief? How can I, without weeping, point out to you the state of the religious whose spiritual head I am? For it is of them I would speak, M. le Président. As I entered my diocese, how heart-rending were the sights that met my gaze on all sides. In the sacred buildings consecrated to the education of children, the cure of the sick, and the care of the aged, the instruction of our priests and the contemplation of the divine mysteries, I found nothing but anxious faces and sad looks. There, where the joy of innocence and the quietude of labour formerly reigned, a dark anxiety has settled. Sighs go up to heaven, and from all lips the same cry of anguish, ‘Who will care for our sick and aged? What will become of our little children? Where shall we retire to pray?’ These were the words that greeted the shepherd of the diocese of Tourcoing, such were the words of the monks and nuns who knelt at his feet and kissed his hands, for they have been robbed of that which is theirs by right, of that which is also the right of our poor, our widows and orphans, the bread of our clergy, and the viaticum of our missionaries. Thus, at the moment of total ruin, our monks and nuns bewailed their fate while they waited for the tax-collectors to outrage the sanctuary of our cloistered virgins, and even to seize the sacred vessels on the altar.