THE VATICAN COUNCIL
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for a probable contingency; but he was soon followed by the Bishop of Nîmes, ,vho thought the discussion of the dogma superfluous, and foreshadowed a vote by acclama- tion. The Cz"viltà on the 6th of February gave utterance to the hope that the Council would not hesitate to proclaim the dogma and confirm the Syllabus in less than a month. Five days later the Pope wrote to some Venetians who had taken a VO\V to uphold his infallibility, encouraging their noble resolution to defend his supreme authority and all his rights. Until the month of May Cardinal Antonelli's confidential language to- diplomatists was that the dogma was to be proclaimed, and that it would en- counter no difficulty. Cardinal Reisach \vas to ha ve been the President of the Council. As Archbishop of IVlunich he had allowed himself and his diocese to be governed by the ablest of all the ultramontane divines. During his long residence in Rome he rose to high estimation, because he was reputed to possess the secret, and to have discovered the vanity, of German science. He had _amused himself with Christian antiquities; and his friendship for the great explorer De' Rossi brought him for a time under sus- picion of liberality. But later he became unrelenting in his ardour for the objects of the C-iviltà, and regained the confidence of the Pope. The German bishops com- plained that he betrayed their interests, and that their church had suffered mischief from his paramount influence. But in Rome his easy temper and affable manners made him friends; and the Court knew that there was no cardinal on whom it was so safe to rely. Fessler, the first bishop who gave the signal of the intended definition, was appúinted Secretary. He was esteemed a learned man in Austria, and he was wisely chosen to dispel the suspicion that the conduct of the Council ,vas to be jealously retained in Roman hands, and to prove that there are qualities by which the confi- dence of the Court could be won by men of a less favoured nation. Besides the President and Secretary, the most conspicuous of the Pope's theological advisers was a
