independent and united as a republic.  Protestant she already is, and though the memory of saints and martyrs may continue to be revered, the ideal of woman to be adored under the name of Mary, yet Christ will now begin to be a little thought of; his idea has always been kept carefully out of sight under the old regime; all the worship being for the Madonna and saints, who were to be well paid for interceding for sinners;—­an example which might make men cease to be such, was no way coveted.  Now the New Testament has been translated into Italian; copies are already dispersed far and wide; men calling themselves Christians will no longer be left entirely ignorant of the precepts and life of Jesus.

The people of Rome have burnt the Cardinals’ carriages.  They took the confessionals out of the churches, and made mock confessions in the piazzas, the scope of which was, “I have sinned, father, so and so.”  “Well, my son, how much will you pay to the Church for absolution?” Afterward the people thought of burning the confessionals, or using them for barricades; but at the request of the Triumvirate they desisted, and even put them back into the churches.  But it was from no reaction of feeling that they stopped short, only from respect for the government.  The “Tartuffe” of Moliere has been translated into Italian, and was last night performed with great applause at the Valle.  Can all this be forgotten?  Never!  Should guns and bayonets replace the Pope on the throne, he will find its foundations, once deep as modern civilization, now so undermined that it falls with the least awkward movement.

But I cannot believe he will be replaced there.  France alone could consummate that crime,—­that, for her, most cruel, most infamous treason.  The elections in France will decide.  In three or four days we shall know whether the French nation at large be guilty or no,—­whether it be the will of the nation to aid or strive to ruin a government founded on precisely the same basis as their own.

I do not dare to trust that people.  The peasant is yet very ignorant.  The suffering workman is frightened as he thinks of the punishments that ensued on the insurrections of May and June.  The man of property is full of horror at the brotherly scope of Socialism.  The aristocrat dreams of the guillotine always when he hears men speak of the people.  The influence of the Jesuits is still immense in France.  Both in France and England the grossest falsehoods have been circulated with unwearied diligence about the state of things in Italy.  An amusing specimen of what is still done in this line I find just now in a foreign journal, where it says there are red flags on all the houses of Rome; meaning to imply that the Romans are athirst for blood.  Now, the fact is, that these flags are put up at the entrance of those streets where there is no barricade, as a signal to coachmen and horsemen that they can pass freely.  There is one on the house where I am, in which is no person but myself, who thirst for peace, and the Padrone, who thirsts for money.