The new Bishop of Barcelona.

— We are written from Spain, dated August 1, 1864:

“Dear master, “I take the liberty of sending you the new pastoral letter that Monsignor Pantaleão, Bishop of Barcelona, has just published in the newspaper Diário de Barcelona, of July 31. As you may note, he wished to march in the footsteps of his predecessor. As for me, a sincere Spiritist, I forgive the insults he directs at us, but I cannot help thinking that he might employ the knowledge he possesses in a more profitable manner for the good of the faith and of his fellow men. To cite but one example, we have at every moment the spectacle of those abominable bullfights, in which the poor animals, after having spent their lives in the service of man, come to die disemboweled in those sad arenas, for the delight of a populace avid for blood, whose evil instincts are developed by those barbarous games. “This is what you ought to fulminate against, Monsignor, and not against Spiritism, which daily leads back to the fold the sheep you had lost. For I, who believed sincerely in God, who recognized His grandeur in the most minute details of Nature, before being a Spiritist could not approach a church, so great was the discordance my eyes saw between those who call themselves the representatives of God on Earth and that great figure of the Christ, whom the Gospel shows us as all love and self-denial. Yes, I said to myself, Jesus sacrifices Himself for us; He makes His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, clad in sackcloth, mounted on an ass; and you, who call yourselves His representatives, cover yourselves with silk, gold, and diamonds. Is this the contempt for riches that the divine Messiah preached to His apostles? No; and yet, I confess it to you, Monsignor, ever since I have been a Spiritist I have been able to enter your churches and pray in them with fervor, despite the worldly music that plays opera arias there; I have been able to pray, thinking that, among all those people gathered there, to some, perhaps, that theatrical pomp was useful in elevating their souls to God; so I have been able to forgive your luxury and to understand it in a certain sense. You see, then, Monsignor, that it is not against the Spiritists that you should thunder; and if you have in view, as I do not doubt, only the good of your flock, reconsider your manner of viewing Spiritism, which recommends to us nothing but love of our fellow men, the forgiveness of injuries, gentleness, charity, and love, even toward our own enemies. “Dear master, forgive me these few lines, which were suggested to me by this new pastoral letter. Spiritism has come to revive my faith, explaining to me all the miseries of life which, until then, my intelligence had not been able to comprehend. Sincerely convinced that we are working for our own progress and for the progress of Humanity, I shall not cease to propagate this doctrine within my circle of relations, employing, to that end, a profound conviction and the means that God has offered me.

“Deign to receive, dear master, etc.”

We give below the translation of the pastoral letter of the monsignor bishop. We reproduce it in extenso, so as not to weaken its scope. The monsignor of Barcelona passes, rightly, for a man of merit; he must therefore have gathered the most powerful arguments against Spiritism. Our readers will judge whether he will be more fortunate than his colleagues, and whether the coup de grâce will be given us from the other side of the Pyrenees. We confine ourselves to adding a few observations.

— “We, D. D. Pantaleão Monserra y Navarro, by the grace of God and of the Holy Apostolic See, Bishop of Barcelona, knight of the grand cross of the American Order of Isabella the Catholic, of the Council of His Majesty, etc.

“To our beloved and faithful diocesans, “Man, placed on Earth as in a place of darkness that prevents him from seeing the things set in a superior order, cannot take a step to seek them, unless he be enlightened by the flame of faith. If he separates himself from that guide, he will only stumble, falling today into the extreme of incredulity, which denies everything, and tomorrow into that of superstition, which believes in everything. Our age, which claims to conduct itself by reason and by the senses, admitting as truth only what these fallacious witnesses show it, finds itself traversed by an immense current of ideas, dragging along, in consequence, the denial of the supernatural and an excessive credulity. The one and the other are the product of the pride of human intelligence, which refuses to pay reasonable attention to the revealed word of God. The present generation finds itself obliged to witness this sad spectacle which today the peoples most advanced in science and in civilization present to us. The North American States, that nation called a model, and certain parts of France, including the colony of Algiers, n have applied themselves, for some time now, to the ridiculous study and to the application of Spiritism, which, under that name, comes to resurrect the ancient practices of necromancy, through the evocation of invisible Spirits, who repose in the place of their destiny, beyond the sepulcher, and consult them to discover the secrets hidden beneath the veil that God has stretched between time and eternity.” Observation. – If one is reprehensible for maintaining relations with the Spirits, it would be necessary for the Church to prevent them from coming without being called, for it is well known that there is a great number of spontaneous manifestations, even among persons who have never heard Spiritism spoken of. How were the Misses Fox, in the United States, the first who revealed their presence in that country, set upon the path of evocations, if not by the Spirits who came to manifest themselves to them, when they were absolutely not thinking of them? Why did those Spirits leave the place that had been assigned to them beyond the sepulcher? With or without God's permission? Spiritism did not spring from the brain of a man like a philosophical system created by the imagination. If the Spirits had not manifested themselves of their own accord, there would have been no Spiritism. If one cannot prevent them from manifesting, one cannot stop Spiritism, just as one cannot prevent a river from flowing, unless one suppresses its source. To claim that the Spirits do not manifest themselves is a question of fact and not of opinion. Against evidence no contestation is possible.

— “This exaggerated desire to know everything, by ridiculous and reproved means, is only the fruit of that need, of that emptiness which man experiences when he has rejected all that was proposed to him as truth by his legitimate and infallible sovereign: the Church.”

Observation. – If what that infallible sovereign proposes as truth Science demonstrates to be an error, is it man's fault if he rejects it? Was the Church infallible when it condemned to eternal punishment those who believed in the movement of the Earth and in the antipodes? when even today it condemns those who believe that the Earth was not formed in six days of twenty-four hours each? For the Church to be believed on its word, it would be necessary that it teach nothing that could be contradicted by the facts.

— “In a moment of ardor to know everything for himself, he repelled as superstition that very truth, because his understanding did not comprehend it or did not agree with the notions received on the matter. Later, however, he judged necessary what he had despised; he wished to rehabilitate himself in his faith; he examined it anew and, according as such examination was made by persons of lively imagination, or by others of nervous and irritable temperament, they admitted, into their system of belief, all that the former thought they saw and heard from the evoked Spirits, in a moment of melancholy exaltation.” Observation. – We had never thought that faith, that is, the adoption or the rejection of the truths taught by the Church, after the examination made by one who sincerely wishes to return to it, was a question of temperament. If, in order to give them preference over other beliefs, one must not be nervous, nor irritable, nor have a lively imagination, there are many people who will be fatally excluded in consequence of their constitution. We believe that in this century of intellectual progress, faith is a question of comprehension.

— “It was thus that there came to be created a religion which, reproducing the deviations and aberrations of paganism, threatens to lead to madness and to the most filthy cynicism (y al cinismo mas inmundo) the society avid for the marvelous.”

Observation. – Here is yet another prince of the Church who proclaims, in an official act, that Spiritism is a religion being created. It is the case to repeat here what we have already said on the subject: If one day Spiritism becomes a religion, the Church will have been the first to give such an idea. In any case, that new religion, should it become one, would differ from paganism by the capital fact that it does not admit a localized hell, with material punishments, whereas the hell of the Church, with its flames, its tridents, its cauldrons, its razor blades, its sharp-pointed nails, which tear the damned to pieces [a picture gathered from the sermon of a Catholic preacher; see: Religion and progress], and its devils who stoke the fire, is an amplified copy of Tartarus.

— “Allan Kardec, the great propagator of this sect of modern illuminati, confesses it in his The Spirits' Book, saying: ‘That at times these take pleasure in answering ironically and in an equivocal manner, which disconcerts the unfortunate ones who consult them.’ And, notwithstanding that he warns of the necessity there is in discerning the serious Spirits from the superficial ones, he cannot give us the rules necessary for that discernment, a confession that reveals all the vanity and falseness of Spiritism, with its deplorable consequences.”

Observation. – We refer the Bishop of Barcelona to The Mediums' Book (chapter XXIV, page 327).

— “If this system, which establishes a monstrous commerce between light and darkness, between truth and error, between good and evil, in a word, between God and Belial, has no proselytes in Spain, there are, with all certainty, ardent propagators, and the metropolis of our diocese is the theater chosen to make use of all the means that the Spirit of falsehood and of perdition can suggest. The proof of this lies in the fraudulent introduction that is being effected, in spite of the zeal manifested by the local authorities, of thousands of copies of The Spirits' Book, written by the number one preacher of these lies, Allan Kardec, and translated into Spanish.” Observation. – It is very difficult to reconcile these two assertions, namely: that Spiritism has no proselytes in Spain, and that there are, with all certainty, ardent propagators. Nor can one understand how, in a country where there are no Spiritists, The Spirits' Book circulates by the thousands.

— “Reading this original production, we said to ourselves: each century has its preoccupations, its favorite errors; the errors of ours are a tendency to deny what is invisible and to seek certainty only in sensible matter. It would not, then, be unbelievable, had we not seen it, that the nineteenth century, so rich in discoveries concerning the laws of Nature, so rich in observations and in experiments, has adopted the dreams of magic and the apparitions of Spirits by the mere evocation of a simple mortal? And yet, this is so! And this new heresy, imported, it appears, from idolatrous countries by the peoples of the new world, has invaded the old one and found in it adherents and partisans, in spite of the flame of Christianity, which has illuminated for eighteen centuries and condemns such trifles, despite the brilliance which it has spread over its entire surface and, particularly, over Europe.” Observation. – Since the monsignor of Barcelona marvels that the nineteenth century accepts Spiritism so easily, notwithstanding its positive tendencies and the riches of its discoveries with respect to the laws of Nature, we will tell him that it is precisely the aptitude for those discoveries that produces such a result. The relations between the visible world and the invisible world are one of the great natural laws, which it was reserved for the nineteenth century to unveil to the world, as well as so many other laws. Spiritism, the fruit of experience and observation, based on positive facts hitherto incomprehensible, ill-studied, and still little explained, is the expression of that law. For this very reason it comes to destroy the fantastic, the marvelous, and the supernatural, falsely attributed to those facts, bringing them into the category of natural phenomena. As it comes to explain what was inexplicable, demonstrates what it affirms and gives the reason for it, it does not wish to be believed on its word; as it provokes examination, it does not wish to be accepted without knowledge of the cause. It is for such reasons that it corresponds to the positive ideas and tendencies of the century. Its easy acceptance, far from being an anomaly, is a consequence of its nature, which gives it a position among the sciences of observation. Had it surrounded itself with mysteries and demanded blind faith, it would have been repelled as an anachronism. Young still, it meets opposition, like all new ideas of a certain importance. It has against it:

1st – Those who believe only in tangible matter and deny all intellectual power outside of man;

2nd – Certain savants who think that Nature has no more secrets for them, or that it falls to them alone to discover what is still hidden;

3rd – Those who, in all times, have striven to hinder the ascending march of the human spirit, because they feared that the development of ideas, by making things seen very clearly, would harm their power and interests;

4th – Finally, those who, without preconceived idea and not knowing it, judge it by the distortions with which its adversaries present it, aiming to discredit it.

This category constitutes the great majority of the opponents; but it diminishes every day, because the number of those who study increases daily; the prejudices fall before a serious examination and become all the more attached to the thing about which they recognize they had been deceived. Judging by the path traveled by Spiritism in so short a space of time, it is easy to foresee that before long it will have against it only the antagonists of preconceived ideas; and as these form a small minority, their influence will be null. They themselves will suffer the influence of the mass and will be forced to follow the torrent. The manifestation of the Spirits is not merely a belief: it is a fact. Now, in the face of a fact, denial is without value, unless one proves that it does not exist, something that no one has yet demonstrated. As at all points of the globe the reality of the fact is verified daily, one believes in what one sees. This is what explains the impotence of the deniers to halt the movement of the idea. A belief is ridiculous only when it is false; it is no longer so, once it rests upon something positive. Ridicule is for the one who persists in denying the evidence.

— “This ought to convince you, my beloved sons and brethren, of the necessity that man has to believe; and when he despises true beliefs, he embraces with enthusiasm even false ones. This is why the profound Pascal says, in one of his thoughts: ‘The incredulous are the men most prone to believe in everything.’ The Spirit of darkness takes men as the plaything and instrument of his evil purposes, making use of their vanity, their credulity, their presumption, to make of them the propagators and the apostles of that at which they laughed the day before, of what they qualified as a chimerical invention and a scarecrow for weak souls. “No, my brethren, the true faith, the doctrine of Christianity, the constant teaching of the Church, have always reproved the practice of these evocations, which lead to the belief that man has over the Spirits a power that belongs to God alone. ‘It is not in the power of a mortal that the souls separated from their bodies after death should reveal to him the secrets covered by the veil of the future.’ (Matt. 16:4).”

Observation. – Spiritism also says that to the Spirits it is not given to reveal the future, formally condemning the employment of communications from beyond the grave as a means of divination. It says that the Spirits come to instruct us and to better us, and not to read us our fortune; it also says that no one can compel the Spirits to come and speak when they do not wish to.

It is to malevolently distort its objective to claim that it practices necromancy.

(The Mediums' Book, chapter XXVI, p. 386.)

— “Had divine wisdom judged it useful to the happiness and repose of the human race to instruct it concerning the relations between the world of the Spirits and that of corporeal beings, it would have revealed it to us in such a manner that no mortal could be deceived in his communications; it would have taught us a means to recognize when the truth had been told us, or an error insinuated, and would not have abandoned us, for such discernment, to the light of reason, which is a glimmer far too feeble to discover those regions that extend beyond death.”

Observation. – Since today God permits that such relations exist, given that one must admit that nothing happens without divine permission, it is because He judges it useful to the happiness of men, in order to give them the proof of the future life, in which many believe no longer, and because the ever-growing number of the incredulous proves that, alone, the Church is impotent to keep them in the fold. God sends them helpers in the Spirits who manifest themselves; to repel them is not to give proof of submission to His will; to renounce them is to fail to recognize His power; to insult them and to mistreat their interpreters is to act as the Jews did toward the prophets, which made Jesus shed tears over the fate of Jerusalem.

— “Therefore, when a wretched mortal, led astray by his imagination, claims to give us news about the fate of souls in the other world; when men of limited vision have the audacity to wish to reveal to Humanity and to the individual their indefectible destiny in the future, they usurp a power that belongs to God, and which He does not renounce, save for the good of Humanity itself and of the peoples, warning them or restraining them by means of envoys who, like the prophets, bear with them the proof of their mission, in the miracles they perform and in the constant fulfillment of what they have announced. Observation. – Then you renounce the predictions of Jesus, since you do not recognize in what is happening the fulfillment of what He announced. What is the meaning of these words: “I shall pour out the Spirit upon all flesh; your wives and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall have visions, and your old men shall dream dreams?” n

— “We may consider as visionaries those who, abandoning the truth, and giving ear to fables, wish that one should heed as revelations the caprices, the fantastic dreams of their imagination in delirium. Writing to Timothy, Saint Paul warns him against all this, him and the future generations (I Tim., 4:7). The apostle already had a presentiment, eighteen centuries ago, of that which, in our age, incredulity was to offer to fill, with something, the emptiness left in the soul by the absence of faith.”

Observation. – Indeed, incredulity is the plague of our age; it leaves in the soul an immense emptiness. Why, then, does the Church not combat it? Why is it incapable of keeping the faithful in the faith? Material and spiritual means are not lacking to it; does it not possess immense riches, an innumerable army of preachers, the religious instruction of youth? If its arguments do not triumph over incredulity, it is that they are not peremptory enough. Spiritism does not come to compete with it: it does what the Church does not do — it addresses itself to those whom the Church is impotent to lead back, and succeeds in giving them faith in God, in their soul, and in the future life. What is to be said of a physician who, being unable to cure a sick man, should oppose his accepting the care of another physician who could save him? It is true that it does not extol one form of worship at the expense of another, casts anathema on no one, without which it would be welcome to him whose exclusive cause it had embraced; but it is precisely because it bears a countersign, to which all can respond: “Outside of charity there is no salvation,” that it comes to make cease the religious antagonism, which has caused more blood to be shed than the wars of conquest.

— “After having tried divination and somnambulism through animal magnetism, obtaining nothing but the reprobation of sensible men; after having seen the turning tables fall into discredit, they disinterred the foul corpse of this Spiritism, with the absurdity of the transmigration of souls, despising the articles of our creed, such as the Church teaches them, they wished to replace them with others that nullify them, admitting an immortality of the soul, a purgatory, and a hell very different from those our Catholic faith teaches us.”

Observation. – This is very correct. Spiritism does not admit a hell where there are flames, tridents, cauldrons, and razor blades [See: Religion and progress]; nor does it admit that it is a happiness for the elect to lift the lids of the cauldrons in order to see the damned boiling there, perhaps a father, a mother, or a son [See: Pastoral letter of the Bishop of Algiers against Spiritism]; it does not admit that God takes pleasure in hearing, for all eternity, the cries of despair of His creatures, without being touched by the tears of those who repent, in this more cruel than that tyrant who had an air-shaft built, putting the dungeons of the palace into communication with his bedchamber, in order to give himself the pleasure of hearing the groans of his victims. Finally, Spiritism does not admit that supreme happiness consists in a perpetual contemplation, which would be a perpetual uselessness, nor that God should have created souls only to give them a few years, or a few days, of active existence and, thereafter, hurl them forever into tortures or into a useless beatitude. If this is the cornerstone of the edifice, the Church is right to fear the new ideas. It is not with such beliefs that it will close the gaping abyss of incredulity.

— “With this, as the learned Bishop of Algiers said very aptly, all that the incredulous were able to do was to change the face, in order to drag along that portion of believers whose faith, simple and little enlightened, easily lends itself to all that is extraordinary and, at the same time, to succeed in opposing a new obstacle to the conversion of those souls buried in religious indifference, who, seeing that they wish to reduce Christianity to a mosaic of superstitions, ended by blaspheming against it and its author.”

Observations. – Here is a most singular thing! It is Spiritism that prevents the Church from converting the souls buried in religious indifference. But, then, why did it not convert them before the appearance of Spiritism? In that case, it is more powerful than the Church. If the indifferent attach themselves to it by preference, it is that, apparently, what it gives them suits them better.

— “So that men of little faith may not be scandalized in reading the doctrines of The Spirits' Book, and may not believe, even for a single instant, that they are in harmony with all forms of worship and with all beliefs, including the Catholic faith, as Allan Kardec claims, we will remind them that the Holy Scriptures condemn them as folly, saying through the mouth of Ecclesiastes: ‘Divinations, auguries, and dreams are vain things, and the heart suffers these chimeras; whenever they are not sent by the Most High, distrust them; for dreams sadden men, and those who lean upon them are fallen.’ (Eccles., 36:5, 7.) n “Jesus Christ reproaches His disciples for having believed in the vision of a phantom, upon seeing Him walk upon the waters, and does not wish them to be assured of it except by the signs He gives them of the reality of His person. (Luke, 24:39.)

“As interpreters of the divine word, the Church and the Holy Fathers have constantly repelled these deceiving means, by which it is believed that the Spirits communicate with men, and enlightened reason also repels them, for, understanding that, by itself and without the aid of faith, it cannot embrace the things nor the truths that refer to the past in the supernatural order. How could it attain, by itself, in a state of transport or carried away by an ardent imagination, that which can be verified only in one manner, in one place, and in unforeseen circumstances?”

“If, then, on other occasions, we raised our voice against that impious materialism and that systematic incredulity, which denies the immortality of the soul separated from the body in the different states to which divine justice destines it for eternity, today we find ourselves obliged to protest against that active communication, attributed to the evocation of the dead, which claims to reveal what is perceptible only to the infinite divine penetration.

“My brethren and my beloved sons, do not let yourselves be carried away by these vain fables, which enclose the errors and preoccupations of barbarous and ignorant peoples, and all the absurd inventions of creatures whose spirit, weakened by the lack of true faith and by superstition, abjure the religion revealed by the Son of God, degrade human reason, and turn away the purity of the soul. Far be it from our beloved diocesans and, above all, from those readers, regarded, with just reason, as enlightened and civilized, to believe in those tales of dreamers, such as Allan Kardec, men of exalted and delirious imagination! Far from you, then, that anti-Christian belief, which makes phantoms, wandering Spirits, come forth from the tombs; far from you that superstition introduced into our religion by the pagans converted to Christianity, and which the writings of its learned apologists soon expelled.” Observation. – The Spiritists have never made phantoms come forth from the tombs, and this for a very simple reason: in the tombs there exist only the mortal remains, which are destroyed and do not rise again. The Spirits are everywhere in space, happy to be free and rid of the body that made them suffer, which is why they do not cling to their remains, withdrawing from them, rather than seeking them out. Spiritism has always repelled the idea that evocations were easier near the tombs, from which one cannot bring forth what is not there. Only in the theater are such things seen.

— “Take care that your children, carried away by juvenile curiosity, do not read such productions and are not impressed by their figures, which have made a good number of persons lose their good sense, persons who today moan in the houses of the insane, victims of Spiritism.

“Make every effort, my sons and my brethren, to keep pure the doctrine which the divine Master teaches us. Trust and seek support solely in His holy word, with respect to your future. And knowing that it is to divine Providence, ever wise, that it falls to lead man through the vicissitudes of this life, in order to test his faith and revive his hope, without seeking to probe your future fate, seek to assure it by means of good works; it is they that certify your vocation as sons of God, called to the inheritance of the Heavenly Father.”

Observation. – Instead of interfering with the curiosity of the children, might one not be stimulating that of the parents, which this pastoral letter does not fail to arouse? As for madness, it is always the same story, which is beginning to be singularly worn out, and whose result was no more fortunate than that of the supposed phantoms. As experiments are made on all sides, even more in the intimacy of families than in public, and as mediums are found everywhere, in all strata of society and at all ages, each one will be able to inform himself as to the true state of affairs; this is why the efforts made to disfigure Spiritism produce no result. The number of those whom false allegations succeed in deceiving is very small, and of these, wishing to see for themselves, many recognize the truth. How can one persuade a multitude that it is night, when all can see that it is broad daylight? This faculty of practical verification, given to all, is one of the special characteristics of Spiritism; it is what constitutes its strength. It is no longer the same with purely theoretical doctrines, which can be combated by reasoning. Spiritism is based on facts and observations which, incessantly, each one has at hand.

The whole argument of the Bishop of Barcelona is thus summed up: The manifestations of the Spirits are fables, imagined by the incredulous to destroy religion; one should believe only what we say, because we alone are in possession of the truth; examine nothing beyond, so as not to be seduced.

— “To forestall the dangers to which you might succumb, and in view of the divine authority that has been given us to point them out to you and to turn you away from them, in conformity with the faculty recognized in us by article 3 of the last concordat, and in accordance with what was foreseen by the sacred canons and the laws of the kingdom, relative to the errors we have pointed out and combated, we condemn The Spirits' Book, translated into Spanish under the title El Libro de los Espíritus, by Allan Kardec, as falling under articles 8 and 9 of the ordinance promulgated by virtue of the prescription, to this effect, of the Council of Trent. We forbid its reading to all our diocesans, without exception, and we order them to deliver to their parish priests the respective copies that fall into their hands, so that they may be sent to us with the utmost possible security. “Given in our holy visitation of Mataró, on July 27, 1864.”

Pantaleão, Bishop of Barcelona.

By order of His Excellency the Monsignor Bishop, Don Lazaro Bauluz, secretary.

— The prohibition made by the Bishop of Barcelona to all his diocesans, without exception, against occupying themselves with Spiritism, is plagiarized from that of the Bishop of Algiers. We very much doubt that it will have more success, even though it be in Spain, for in that country, as elsewhere, ideas ferment, even under the extinguisher and, perhaps, because of the extinguisher, which keeps them in a hot greenhouse. The auto-da-fé of Barcelona hastened their hatching. The intended effect of that solemnity apparently did not correspond to the expectation, since they did not repeat it; but the execution, which they no longer dare to carry out in public, they wish to carry out in private. In inviting his administrated to remit to him all the Spiritist books that fall into their hands, Monsignor Pantaleão certainly did not have in view to collect them. He interdicts them from evoking the Spirits, which is a right of his; but in his pastoral letter he forgot one essential thing: to prohibit the Spirits from entering Spain. He marvels that Spiritism takes root so easily in the nineteenth century. They ought to marvel still more at seeing in this century the resurrection of the usages and customs of the Middle Ages. And, what is still more surprising, is that there should be found persons, otherwise educated, who comprehend so little the nature and the force of the idea, as to believe that its path can be halted, as one detains a bale of merchandise at the frontier.

You complain, monsignor, that the incredulous and the indifferent remain deaf to the voice of the pastors of the Church, while they submit to that of Spiritism. It is that they are more touched by the words of charity, of encouragement, and of consolation than by the anathemas. Do you believe to lead them back by imprecations, such as the one pronounced lately by the abbé of Villemayor-de-Ladre, against a poor schoolmaster who dared to oppose him? Here is this canonical formula, reported by the Correspondence of Madrid, of June 1864, beside which the famous imprecation of Camille is almost gentleness. [The imprecations of Camille against Rome in the tragedy of Horace.]

The poet placed it in the mouth of a pagan woman, but did not dare to put it in that of a Christian woman.

“Cursed be Auguste Vincent; cursed the clothes that cover him, the earth on which he treads, the bed where he sleeps, the table at which he eats; cursed be the bread and all the other foods on which he nourishes himself, the spring where he drinks and all the liquids he takes.

“May the earth open and may he be buried at this moment; may he have Lucifer at his right hand. May no one be able to speak with him, under penalty of all being excommunicated, even to bid him farewell; cursed be also his fields, upon which no more water shall fall, so that they produce nothing for him; cursed be the mare he rides, the house in which he dwells, and the properties he possesses.

“Cursed also be his parents, the children he has or shall have, who shall be few in number and wicked; they shall go begging and no one shall give them alms; and, if alms be given them, may they not be able to eat them. Still more: may his wife become a widow now, his children orphans and without a father.”