2. Obviously this high mission entails duties many and grave. Wishing, like our predecessors, to see France faithfully fulfil the glorious mandate wherewith she has been entrusted, we have on several occasions during our long pontificate addressed to her our advice, our encouragement, our exhortations. This we did in a special way in our Encyclical Letter of February 8, 1884, Nobilissima Gallorum gens, and in our letter of February 16, 1892, published in French and beginning with the words: "Au milieu des sollicitudes." Our words were not without fruit, and we know from you, Venerable Brothers, that a large portion of the French people ever holds in honor the faith of their ancestors and faithfully observes the obligations it imposes. On the other hand, it could not escape us that the enemies of this holy faith have not been idle and have succeeded in banishing every religious principle from a large number of families, which, in consequence, live in lamentable ignorance of revealed truth, and in complete indifference to all that concerns their spiritual interests and the salvation of their souls.