Emery afterwards remarked to M. Garnier that he had taught the Emperor his catechism, which he did not know. As Napoleon was about to leave the salon, some of the prelates, fearing that he might be displeased with M. Emery's frankness, implored him to excuse the venerable man on account of his advanced age. "You are quite mistaken, gentlemen," said the Emperor. "I am by no means angry with M. Emery. He has spoken like a man who knows what he is about, and that is the way I like men to speak to me. It is true that he does not think as I do, but everyone ought to have the right to his own opinion here." Cardinal Fesch took advantage of the Emperor's favorable dispositions to ask leave for M. Emery to return to his seminary, but Napoleon simply answered, "We shall see." On leaving the audience-chamber, Talleyrand said to one of the members of the commission: "I knew very well that M. Emery was a man of great ability, but I did not believe that he had so much of it. He has the power to tell the Emperor the plain truth without displeasing him." Napoleon was, in fact, so impressed by the wisdom of the answers made by him to the questions he had put, that when Cardinal Fesch, a few days later, wished to speak with him on ecclesiastical affairs, he received this brusque reply: "Hold your tongue! You are an ignoramus! Where did you learn theology? It is with M. Emery, who does know it, that I shall talk about that." The fame of what had taken place in the audience at the Tuileries spread abroad, adding a new lustre to the reputation for wisdom and firmness that the well-known Sulpitian already possessed. Some of the circumstances were inserted by Cardinal Pacca in his "Memoirs," and from them he himself conceived the highest esteem for M. Emery, and remained persuaded that Napoleon never would have become the persecutor of the Church had he, from the first, found more firmness in the bishops. It is to be remarked that this opinion has since been adopted by grave writers both of French and of foreign extraction. Indifferent alike to praise or blame, M. Emery went his way, returning to his humble room with the serenity of a man who sees too near at hand the end of all earthly things to take any further interest in the glory and the honors of earth. "A little later," writes Cardinal Consalvi, " M. Emery was taken ill-perhaps in consequence of the effort he had put upon himself, for he was about eighty years of age; and soon he died, happy in not ending his career before arriving at a point so glorious in the eyes of the world and so meritorious for heaven." His illness lasted only from Tuesday till Sunday. It was the second Sunday after Easter, called by the French, from the open ing words of the Gospel, "The Sunday of the Good Shepherd "of Him who giveth His life for the sheep. The members of the Sulpitian order in Paris gathered around his bed. In a low voice, and with very great effort, he blessed them in words which tell the true story of his long and eventful career : "I have lived only for the Seminary and for the Church. They will form the subject of my prayers and wishes even to my last breath. I give you all my blessing." "Then," writes his biographer, M. Méric, "he fell into a heavy sleep. From time to time a gesture, a look, which still preserved its intelligence, told that the last hour had not yet come, and that he was not yet separated from his beloved children. Then he ceased all exterior communication with this world, and shut himself up in a great silence, interrupted by the sharp sound of his difficult breathing. One would have said that he was climbing painfully a steep mountain, and that his body and soul were making a supreme effort to reach some mysterious summit. All stood there, dumb and dismayed at the sight of a soul striving to break its final bonds and fly away, while the trembling house of the body was falling into ruin. They threw themselves on their knees and began the prayers for the dying. Finally, M. Pignier, who was watching every movement, bent once more over the dying father and listened intently; then, deeply moved, he said: 'It is finished. We can recite the De Profundis.'" Very soon after Cardinal Fesch entered the room. He had come to visit once more the man who had dared to speak to him, as well as to his illustrious nephew, the words of fearless truth, and also, in the cardinal's case, of wise spiritual advice and intimate affection. He came too late. Grieved even to tears, he said a prayer, and then made his way to the palace, where he said to the Emperor: "Sire, I have bad news for you. M. Emery is dead." "I am very sorry," exclaimed the Emperor. "I am very sorry. He was a wise man; he was an ecclesiastic of distinguished merit. It is necessary to have extraordinary honors for him, and he must be interred at the Pantheon." The cardinal, who knew how contrary to the spirit of the Sulpitians such obsequies would be, informed the Emperor that the burial-place of M. Emery was already selected at the countryhouse of the seminary, and that it was proper he should rest among his children, who would be inconsolable if they were separated from him. Napoleon did not then insist upon his idea being carried out. The cardinal told this incident to M. Duclaux. The aged face of the dead priest resumed, immediately after his painful death, its expression of sweet serenity. There was to be seen upon it the peace and tranquility of one who rests at last after long labors ended well. They bore him from his seminary in Paris to the quiet cemetery at Issy, and placed above his tomb the splendid Latin epitaph composed by his friend, the Abbé Hémey d'Auberive, who said of him, weeping: "I lose today the friend of fifty-eight years." The severest critic cannot deny that the epitaph is a faithful picture of this old and fearless veteran of the Cross. Hic Jacet JACOBUS ANDREAS EMERY Seminarii Sancti Sulpitii Superior nonus, In ore sermo ad flectendos animos appositus, Prisci moris et avitæ disciplinæ tenacissimus, In regiminis arte præcipuus, Episcopalibus infulis pluries repulsis, Bonum certamen certans obiit, So went, to meet the King of kings, the only man Napoleon feared; a man of whom it can be truly said that, throughout the sanguinary scenes of the French Revolution and the critical years of the First Empire, he feared God, and knew no other fear. S. L. EMERY. THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW WOMAN. GOOD OOD causes are commonly ruined by bad advocacy, and that in two ways: by the indiscretion of sincere supporters and by the malice of the self-interested and insincere. Nothing is more familiar to us in the history of progress than to see some particular member wrenched away violently from the organic body of truth, built up into an all-sufficing philosophy, and carried to extravagant lengths, being no longer limited and checked by principles co-ordinate or superior. As a lie has no subsistence in itself, but must be hung on a framework of truth, its success varies according as the truth it rests on is more evident, and the distortion it adds to it more subtle and imperceptible. It is a necessary result of the limitations of the human mind that the whole body of truth, or of any department of truth, cannot at once be apprehended in all its distinctness and unity, but must first be received in the gross, and then noticed in detail part by part, and finally grasped once more in its entirety by an intelligent synthesis. And the means by which this subjective development is usually effected is everywhere the same, whether we speak of the development of Christian doctrine or of philosophical truth. Some detail heretofore overlooked and neglected, not without hurt, forces itself into notice. It proves to be a solution of many difficulties and inconsistencies. Hasty thinkers regard it as an entirely new discovery, and suppose that because it was not explicitly recognized and emphasized before, therefore it was not recognized at all, or was even denied. If it solves so many difficulties, it is confidently predicted that it will solve all. It is not only true, but it is the whole truth, and the old faith and philosophy is indiscriminately condemned. In time, however, the limits of the new doctrine begin to be felt, and it has to be squeezed and twisted to ⚫evade the difficulties which present themselves and to meet all the problems it has undertaken to solve; and eventually the maimed and mangled theory is abandoned in favor of some still newer intellectual panacea. But, meantime, the Church, in mere self-defence, has been forced to look within and to look without, and, comparing the new heresy with the old faith, to recognize in the former the perversion of a truth long hidden within her own bosom, but of which now she becomes for the first time explicitly conscious; and while those who move on the topmost path of thought are already wild in the excitement of some new theory, she is quietly gathering up and appropriating whatever was worth keeping from the debris of the last. Hence, if she always drags a little behind the extreme thought of the day, it is in the company of truth; and if the suggestions of progress and healthy reform often originate with her enemies, it is she that corrects, adopts and profits by them. Indeed, it is almost necessary that the Church's attitude towards these revolutionary movements should at first be one of hostility, that her attention should be fixed on the exaggerations and distortions of the truth rather than on the truth itself; for it is usually by the clashing of these excesses with her own teaching that she is roused to interest herself in the matter. Were she to throw herself headlong into sympathy with the cause, approving what is sound, tolerating or ignoring what is unsound, she would be untrue to her mission in lending the force of her authority to increase the impetus of a misdirected movement. Her first duty is to secure accuracy of aim and direction, and, until then, to maintain an attitude not merely of neutrality, but often of opposition and hostility. Thus, all through her history she exhibits the same apparent inconsistency, first rejecting and then accepting the results of progressive thought; yet what she rejects is not the truth, but the lie with which it is entangled; and what she accepts is the pure gold purged from its dross. This is well illustrated in regard to the results of modern physical science, as well as of political, social and moral philosophy. As long as physicists push their principles and methods into other spheres of truth and try to usurp an unwarranted supremacy for their experimental criterion, the Church has no ears for their discoveries, so intent is she on their fallacies. Similarly, a democracy based on the principles of Rousseau, a socialism which appeals to those of Lasalle and Marx, must find her an enemy; and it is only after she has registered her protest on the face of history that she begins to sift the matter and to inaugurate a counterreformation. It is not surprising, therefore, to find numbers of narrower and less liberal-minded Catholics in strong opposition to such counterreformations, and to the favorers thereof. It seems to them that the Church is in danger of making a false peace with her old enemies. Not discerning the chaff from the grain, all criticism is, to their mind, a concession to rationalism; all political and social reform, to communism and anarchy; all change, a condemnation of the past. It cannot be denied that the "New Woman" in her extreme type is an abomination to Catholic instincts, nor that the movement which has culminated in her production (we trust it has |