Then the Pope went on to say that he must thank me once more for my unflagging attention to the welfare of my Catholic subjects; that he had heard about this from so many sources that he was glad to tell me personally how grateful both he and the German Catholics were for this attention to their interests; that he could assure me that my Catholic subjects would stand by me, in good and bad times, with absolute fidelity. "Ils resteront absolument et infailliblement fidèles" ("They will remain absolutely and infallibly faithful"). I rejoiced greatly at these words of appreciation from such an exalted source. I answered that I considered it the duty of a Christian sovereign to care for his subjects to the best of his ability, irrespective of creed; that I could assure him that, during my reign, everybody could profess his religion without interference and fulfill his duties toward his ecclesiastical overlord; that this was a fundamental principle of my life, from which I could not be swerved. Because I showed my Catholic fellow countrymen from the very beginning that I wished to allow them complete freedom in the exercise of their religion, a quieter spirit was engendered in the land and the aftermath of the "Kulturkampf" disappeared more and more. But I did not conceal from myself the fact that, despite all politeness and friendliness, the prelates, with the sole exception of Cardinal Kopp, still continued to look upon me as the Emperor, and I was compelled to take into account that, in the Catholic south and west, this idea would never quite vanish. Grateful acknowledgment has repeatedly been made to me of the fact that the Catholics were as well off, during my reign, as they could possibly desire; but the constantly more uncompromising attitude of the Church on mixed marriages, and that of the Centrist party in politics, were certainly a sign that the antiheretical tendency still lived beneath the peaceful surface. This made all the more intense my desire for the firm union of the _Protestant Churches_--first, in Prussia, then in Germany, finally, in all Europe. My endeavors, in conjunction with the Chief Ecclesiastical Councilor, the General Superintendent, and so on, to find means of effecting this union, were most earnest. I hailed the Eisenach Conference with joy and followed its proceedings with interest. I assembled all the General Superintendents for the consecration of the Church at Jerusalem and also was able to greet invited deputations from Sweden, Norway, and so forth; and I did likewise on the occasion of the consecration of the Berlin cathedral, where, among many other deputations, the Church of England was represented by the Bishop of Ripon (W. Boyd-Carpenter), the pastor of Queen Victoria of England, equally prominent as a writer and preacher.