"I am going to give it to you; but you must comply with the last condition I impose for its ransom."
"Knave! Mountebank! You would damn me if I were not damned already! And what is this last condition?"
"That you take my wife again," responded the cavalier; "for you are like for like, Peter for John."
THE VATICAN COUNCIL.
NUMBER TWO.
We intimated in our last number our intention of presenting each month to the readers of The Catholic World an article on the progress, and, so far as we could, on the proceedings of the Vatican Council, now in session. We shall endeavor, in so doing, to state facts, the accuracy of which we can guarantee. Misstatements, silly, absurd, and not unfrequently mischievous, are sent by "our own correspondents," to fill the columns of hostile newspapers; and they may sometimes disturb the minds and sadden the hearts of the unwary. We wish to give such an account as shall correct such errors and misstatements, by an accurate and impartial statement of the truth. Our form of a monthly publication may subject us to some delay, and to the disadvantage of saying much which our readers will have already seen in the daily and weekly press. But on the other hand, it will secure for us fuller and more accurate knowledge of our subject than could be obtained at an earlier period, and may enable us, perhaps, to form a more mature judgment on many points. Our aim is to give a series of articles, which our readers may preserve and refer to hereafter. In writing them, we are guided by information derived from the best sources.
The amount and the variety of misstatements and of mistakes about the council and its doings, that have fallen even under our own eyes, would seem incredible. The talent of fiction seems to have attained a truly marvellous development. We tried to classify them. There were fictions to blame, and fictions to praise, fictions droll, fictions malicious, fictions stupid, fictions about persons, fictions about things, fictions about words, fictions about the past, fictions about the present, fictions in the shape of conjectures of the future, fictions gay and witty, fictions solemn and dull, fictions pious, and fictions blasphemous.
But then even this stream of incorrect statements, the result of imagination striving to eke out a scanty knowledge of facts, or of prejudice looking at every thing through a distorted medium, is poured forth to satisfy, if it can, the cravings of the public, and is an additional evidence of the intense and universal interest the Council of the Vatican has excited. Men may misrepresent it, they may hate it, or fear it. They cannot despise it. It seems they cannot be silent about it.