attention to subjects intimately connected with the most imperious duties of conscience, and with the common weal." The solicitude of the Holy Father, however, only served to increase the venom of his foes. Toward the end of April, 1904, M. Loubet, President of the French Republic, visited Rome, and contrary to the spirit of the Concordat and the rules regulating the relations of the Holy See and the French Government, went immediately to the Quirinal to pay his respects to the Italian king. The Holy See considered this visit of M. Loubet "as a very grave offense against its dignity and rights. At the same time, while uttering in the face of the French Government an energetic and formal protest against the offense thus suffered, it sent in analogous terms by means of its foreign representatives, an account of its action to the governments of all the other States with which the Holy See held direct relations." The Pontifical note declared that "a head of a Catholic nation inflicts a grave offense against the Sovereign Pontiff in coming to give homage at Rome, not to the Pontifical See but to him who contrary to all right usurps his civil sovereignty." The "note" goes on to remark that the offense is all the greater coming from the "first magistrate of the French Republic, presiding over a nation which is bound by the most intimate traditional relations with the Roman pontificate, enjoys in virtue of a bilateral contract with the Holy See certain signal privileges and a large representation in the Sacred College, and possesses by a singular favor the protectorate of Catholic interests in the Orient." It goes on, moreover, to state that this visit of M. Loubet was "sought intentionally by the Italian Government for the purpose of enfeebling the rights of the Holy See," and it concludes by declaring that "the Sovereign Pontiff makes these most formal and explicit protests to the end that so afflicting an action, (as that of M. Loubet) might not constitute a precedent." On the receipt of this protest the French Government gave the Holy See to understand that it rejected the note in its form and in its substance. The anti-clerical journals went even farther than this, publishing not only the Pope's answer to French Government, but also the note which had been sent to the other Catholic Powers. The intention of such publication being to stir up the rancor of all who were moved by hostility to the Holy See.