CHAPTER XIV.

A RELIGIOUS INCIDENT

A little religion can be mingled with this justice. Here is an example.

Frederick Morin, like Arnauld de l'Ariège, was a Catholic Republican. He

thought that the souls of the victims of the 4th of December, suddenly

cast by the volleys of the coup d'état into the infinite and the

unknown, might need some assistance, and he undertook the laborious task

of having a mass said for the repose of these souls. But the priests

wished to keep the masses for their friends. The group of Catholic

Republicans which Frederick Morin headed applied successively to all the

priests of Paris; but met with a refusal. They applied to the

Archbishop: again a refusal. As many masses for the assassin as they

liked, but far the assassinated not one. To pray for dead men of this

sort would be a scandal. The refusal was determined. How should it be

overcome? To do without a mass would have appeared easy to others, but

not to these staunch believers. The worthy Catholic Democrats with great

difficulty at length unearthed in a tiny suburban parish a poor old

vicar, who consented to mumble in a whisper this mass in the ear of the

Almighty, while begging Him to say nothing about it.

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The History of a Crime