In obedience to these tactics, it was resolved to have an address from the students of the Sapienza.

Such an address, containing the stock terms of fulsome adulation and unreasoning reverence, was drawn up by the authorities.

Only a dozen students out of the 400 to 500 of whom the college consists volunteered to sign it.

The students were then summoned in a body before the rector, and requested to add their signatures.

For this purpose the address was left in their hands, but instead of being signed it was torn to pieces, and the fragments scattered about the lecture-room, amidst a chorus of shouts and groans.
With the sort of senile folly which characterized all the proceedings of the Vatican at this period, the affair, instead of being passed unnoticed, was taken up seriously, and assumed in consequence an utterly uncalled-for notoriety.