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144 Therefore 30 who had been absent from the congregation had returned to vote in the last Public Session. The two bishops who voted on that day against the decree, as soon as Pius the Ninth had confirmed it, at once submitted and made a profession of their faith. They proved by their adverse vote the liberty which the 55 who left Rome equally possessed; and by their prompt submission they showed to the world that their opposition had been offered not to the truth of the doctrine, but to the expediency of defining it.

An English journal which throughout the Council laboured week by week to deride or to depreciate the Council and all its acts, described this closing scene in these words: 'The ceremony (of the 18th of July), taken as a ceremony, appears to have fallen very flat.' The Council had been for eight months engaged in something more than ceremonies. Such, however, was not the estimate of another witness.

The Placets of the fathers struggled through the storm, while the thunder pealed above and the lightning flashed in at every window, and down through the dome and every smaller cupola. "Placet!" shouted his eminence or his grace, and a loud clap of thunder followed in response, and then the lightning darted about the Baldacchino and every part of the church and Conciliar Hall, as if announcing the response. So it continued for nearly one hour and a half, during which time the roll was being called, and a more effective scene I never witnessed. Had all the decorators and all the getters-up of ceremonies in Rome been employed, nothing approaching