As Advent proceeds to Christmas, Cardinal Franklin witnesses the new Order of Christ Crucified go forward "with almost miraculous success." Practically the entirety of Rome has enrolled, including the deposed monarchs. From throughout the world, long lists arrive of new members drawn up by their Bishops, "...but better than all this was the tidings of victory in another sphere. In Paris forty of the new-born Order had been burned alive in one day in the Latin Quarter, before the Government intervened. From Spain, Holland, and Russia had come in other names. In Düsseldorf, eighteen men and boys, taken by surprise at the singing of Prime in the Church of St. Lawrence, had been cast down one by one into the city sewer, each chanting as he vanished: "Christi Fili Dei vivi miserere nobis", and from the darkness had come the same broken song until it was silenced with stones. Meanwhile, German prisons were thronged with the first batches of recusants. The world shrugged its shoulders, and declared that they had brought it on themselves, while it yet deprecated mob violence, and requested the attention of the authorities and the decisive repression of this new conspiracy of superstition. And within St. Peter's Church the workmen were busy at the long rows of new altars, affixing to the stone diptychs the brass-forged names of those who had already fulfilled their vows and gained their crowns. It was the first word of God's reply to the world's challenge."