Unfortunately the Pope is a king. In this capacity he must have a Court, or something approaching to it. He selects his courtiers among men of his own faith, his own opinions, and his own profession: nothing can be more reasonable. These courtiers, in their turn, dispose of the different offices of state, spiritual or temporal, just as it may happen. Nor can the Sovereign object to this pretension as being ridiculous. Moreover he naturally hopes to be more faithfully served by priests than laymen; while he feels that the salaries attached to the best-paid places are necessary to the splendour of his Court. Thence it follows that to preach the secularization of the government to the Pope, is to preach to the winds. Here you have a man who would not be a layman, who pities laymen simply because they are laymen, regarding them as a caste inferior to his own; who has received an anti-lay education; who thinks differently to laymen on all important points; and you expect this man will share his power with laymen, in an empire where he is absolute master of all and everything! You require him to surround himself with laymen, to summon them to his councils, and to confide to them the execution of his behests! Supposing, however, that for some reason or other he fears you, and wishes to humour you a little, see what he will do. He will seek in the outer offices of his ministers some lay secretary, or assistant, or clerk, a man without character or talent; he will employ him, and take care that his incapacity shall be universally known and admitted. After which, he will say to you sadly, "I have done what I could." But if he were to speak the honest truth, he would at once say, "If you wish to secularize anything, begin by putting laymen in _my_ place." It is not in 1859 that the Pope will venture to speak so haughtily. Intimidated by the protection of France, deafened by the unanimous complaints of his subjects, obliged to reckon with public opinion, he declares that he has secularized everything. "Count my functionaries," he says: "I have 14,576 laymen in my service. You have been told that ecclesiastics monopolize the public service. Show me these ecclesiastics! The Count de Rayneval looked for them, and could find but ninety-eight; and even of those, the greater part were not in priests' orders! Be assured we have long since broken with the clerical _régime_. I myself decreed the admissibility of laymen to all offices but one. In order to show my sincerity, for some time I had lay ministers! I entrusted the finances to a mere accountant, the department of justice to an obscure little advocate, and that of war to a man of business who had been intendant to several Cardinals. I admit that for the moment we have no laymen in the Ministry; but my subjects may console themselves by reflecting that the law does not prevent me from appointing them.