As time wore on, the excitement became more intense. In France, the action of the government, as in most things under the Second Empire, was ambiguous. It seemed to dread the impending innovations, and every now and then what appeared to the world as a menace was half uttered. Yet it was plain that the Curia was not disturbed. Nothing can be more tranquil than the letters in the _Civiltá_ from its French correspondent. There is an apparent sense of solid support, such as no gusts of the popular winds will seriously shake. M. de Banneville, the acceptable representative of France in Rome, continued in his post. When the question of the presence of princes in the Council was to be faced, Cardinal Antonelli had the comfort of treating it with this trusty friend. It was comparatively easy to convey to him the intimation which, in a few words, represented, as M. Veuillot had showed, a radical revolution in Church and State. _There were no more Catholic States._ The term "Catholic arms" continued to be applied, by official writers, to those of France and the other countries which had reconquered the lost States of the Pope. But arms are perhaps, like gold and silver to the Brahmans, substances which never contract pollution. The monarchs were outside the door. Even France, whose flag at Civitá Vecchia was the only protection of the temporal power, was told that she was no longer a Catholic State--she, the eldest daughter of the Church; she whom the Pope, in parting with General Failly, had for love of her chassepots--the "prodigious chassepots," as they were called--blessed as the "most Christian nation!" The Curia knew that the hold of the Pope on the priests and schools was stronger than that of the Bonapartes on army and nation; and they were rearing up their champions, while the Empire was wearing out its own.
The same number of the _Civiltá_ which records the death of Antonelli states the case in the following terms. The Pontiff could not invite powers "of which one, like Italy, was in open hostility to the Church; of which another had, like Austria, of her own motion, torn up the Concordat; and another had, like France, a turncoat and a perfidious traitor to the Holy See upon the throne."