suppression of the exposures of the Abbé
Cognat?

Where everything is ex parte, nothing is
credible; and much may be said in support
of the view that Louis-Jean Verger is an
assassin of the species of Carl Ludwig Sand
and Charlotte Corday. To obtain his opportunity,
he had not to surmount the obstacles
which stood in the way of the assassins of
Kotzebue and Marat. His cool sagacity does
not equal the cold premeditation which was
displayed by a young girl. The thing which
showed most presence of mind —the pushing
aside of the cape -- could scarcely have
required the suggestion of third parties. Verger,
in twelve days after his dismissal from his
parish, and while able to buy an expensive
knife, could scarcely have been suffering from
actual want. No doubt a paper is said to
have been found upon him in which he said,
"they do not allow a priest to die of want."
No doubt he had known want; and hunger
and the fear of hunger are conditions singularly
favourable to mental over-excitement—
the state which the French call exaltation.

Many elements of homicidal exaltation
fermented in this hot brain. Disappointed
ambition, morbid vanity, and pagan
revenge, might, in a man of education, assume
the disguise of theological fanaticism, and
hide their demon aspects from the half
conscious criminal himself, in the robes and
renown of an angel of light. He watched for
his opportunity from the morning until the
evening. Ruined and envious, the
disappointed priest looking at the successful priest,
might nurse with evil joy the thought that
he could still lay low the man of the mitre
and crozier. Fanatically excited against the
goddess, and indignant at the ruin brought
upon him by his advocacy of reforms, the
enthusiast might say, in his perverted heart, "I
shall make them talk of me; I have been
enslaved, and I shall be free. I have been silenced
in my pulpit, but I shall, with one blow, shiver
the whole golden fabric of idolatry."

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

Marie-Dominique-Auguste Sibour was born
at Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, in the diocese
of Valence, on the fourth of April, seventeen
hundred and ninety-two. He was
ordained a priest in eighteen hundred and
fifteen. For several years he fulfilled the
functions of a vicar of Saint Sulpice; and
was subsequently a canon of Nîmes. When
he was forty-eight years of age, he was
consecrated Bishop of Digne, in eighteen
hundred and forty. His talents as a writer,
orator, and administrator, and a certain
reputation for liberality, pointed him out to
the choice of the Republican Dictator of
June, eighteen hundred and forty-eight, as
the suitable successor of Archbishop Affre in
the archiepiscopal throne of Paris.

General Cavaignac gave to Bishop Sibour
the mitre he had picked up on the
barricades. The mitre came by assassination, and
went by assassination. Archbishop Affre was
shot by a workman upon the twenty-fourth
of June, eighteen hundred and forty-eight;
and Archbishop Sibour was stabbed by a
priest upon the third of January, eighteen
hundred and fifty-seven; and both died in
full pontificals— the one upon a barricade,
speaking words of peace in a furious
insurrection; the other in a church, while
giving his benediction to children. There is
an old man-servant in the archiepiscopal
palace, whose arms have held the corpses of
both his murdered masters.

I may mention a few traits of Archbishop
Sibour come under my observation, which
seemed to me worthy of note. During the
Republic there were many associations of
workmen of different kinds, who clubbed
together their capital, and conducted their
affairs by votes, dispensing altogether with
masters, and sharing mutually their profits,
Of course these associations were very
powerful during the conflicts of the revolution.
As far as I could judge, the associations
usually consisted of a more sober and intelligent
kind of workmen than the generality of
Parisian workfolks. They were very different
indeed from the National workshops. M.
Léon Faucher, the Minister of the Interior,
and Archbishop Sibour, were the most
notable of the personages who delivered speeches
to them. Natural as a reaction against tyrannies
of Parisian employers, and interesting as
social experiments, the associations were,
however, formed by persons ignorant of the
principles of political economy. The
Archbishop addressing an audience of joiners, ebony
workers, and carpet weavers, in November,
eighteen hundred and fifty-one, said:

"Christ had redeemed the people from
slavery, more recently a revolution had
emancipated the serfs; and the work you
are accomplishing is the redemption of the
hirelings." The following is the peroration
of a speech of the Archbishop in a workshop
of chair-makers:

"In other shops I have seen many workmen
and one master— here there are ninety
masters."

Archbishop Sibour was sometimes called
the Red Archbishop. On the morning of
the second of December, eighteen hundred
and fifty-one, rumour added the name of the
liberal Archbishop to the list of the republican
members and generals arrested in their
beds. This explained the silence of the
belfries on an occasion when the republicans
expected them to sound the tocsin.

I saw him in the Champ de Mars, blessing
the imperial flags, upon the tenth of May,
eighteen hundred and fifty-two, on the occasion
which was called the Feast of Eagles.
The immense square space from the École
Militaire to the Seine, called the Champ de
Mars, seemed one vast harvest field of
soldiery, whose varied costumes were set off