The Archbishop of Paris fell by the hand of an
assassin on Saturday last, as he was entering the church of St. Etienne du Mont to begin a religious ceremony. A man who had stood among the people within rushed forward, too rapidly to be prevented, and with a broad-bladed knife struck down Archbishop Sibour, who was dead in a few minutes.
The French religious papers, which speak of the crime with horror, at the same time do their best to make it be believed that the man was mad. For the present, however, in the absence of any positive proof of derangement—in the presence of some proof That the murderer was a violent man rendered vindictive by dis
appointment—we can conjecturally arrive at a tolerably consistent story. Verger had, originally been a curate in Paris, afterwards a curate in the diocese of Meaux ; but he had been at various times admonished or suspended—on one occasion for speaking ill of his superiors, on another for taking a violent part in defence of a prisoner during a trial, and lately for outrageous demeanour in denying the new dogma of "the Immaculate Conception." He appears to have been a wrongheaded though perhaps an earnest man, with vehement passions. His suspension and privation he regarded as tyranny and injustice. Desperation at his own prospect of starving, religious bigotry, and personal revenge, all spurred him on. The very act shows that he must be a man of very indifferent understanding ; for it was of a kind that, save for the satisfaction of revenge, could have no practical effect. Sophistication might present reasons for assassinating a powerful arbitrary sovereign, since to remove him might reverse a whole system ; but to kill an ecclesiastical superior could have no such consequence : it could not procure relief from the sentence of suspension—could not alter the state of the Church—could not lead to anything but the appointment of a new Archbishop and the certain destruction of the murderer.
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