Page:The True Story of the Vatican Council.djvu/174

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162
The True Story of the Vatican Council.

cardinal certainly would not have talked about red hats. Nevertheless Pomponio Leto, who was inside when the cardinals pulled their hats over their eyes, was outside when the great tumult arose in which Cardinal Schwarzenberg was carried fainting from the Ambo to his seat. He saw, he tells us, the servants outside rushing to the doors of the Council, fearing for the lives of their masters. It is with such melodramatic and mendacious stuff that those who

    number of this year a correction of this injurious error. But after all this, on the 24th of February 1877, the Saturday Review, as if nothing had happened, speaks of Cardinal Vitelleschi as regarding the decrees of 1870 with alarm and disgust. Cardinal Vitelleschi voted for those decrees on the 18th of July 1870. After all this it is not wonderful that the two brothers, Marchesi Vitelleschi, should write the the following letter with a just indignation:

    "Rome: January 8, 1877.
    "I am grieved beyond measure that there should be in England anyone who still persists in the will to believe that the author of the book entitled 'Pomponio Leto' was my lamented brother, Cardinal Vitelleschi. At the end of June last year, 1876, a protest was inserted in one English journal, signed by us his brothers, in refutation of this odious calumny. I pray, however, that, if thought fit, this renewed protest be inserted in some newspaper, by which I repel, on the part also of my brothers, this most false assertion. And I declare, with full certainty of my conscience, that Cardinal Salvatore Vitelleschi was not in any way the author of the said book; so that whosoever shall say the contrary falsifies shamelessly, and can only say it to outrage the Church of which my deceased brother was a member without reproach.
    "(Signed)Angelo Nobili Vitelleschi."

    As to the true authorship of Pomponio Leto various things are affirmed. It belongs to the anonymous school of Janus and Quirinus, and seems to be the work of more hands than one, and to betray both a German and an English contributor.