 Désiré Dalloz in his learned and comprehensive work on jurisprudence, in which the whole of French law is compiled and commented on under the numerous subjects affected by it, says that as the laws of France (his work was published in 1853, when he was an advocate practising at the imperial Court of Paris) protect the rules of ecclesiastical discipline, they could not exact from the clergyman, in breach of these rules, the disclosure of secrets revealed to him in the exercise of his ministry.Citing the canon of the Fourth Lateran Council enjoining the secrecy of the seal, which, he tells us, only reproduces an older rule going back to the year 600, he observes that the inviolability declared by it is absolute and without distinction.The decision of the Court of Cassation in "Laveine's Case" (30 November 1810, "Recueil général des lois et des arrêts", XI, i, 49) affords support, not by the actual decision, but by certain words used in it, to the contention for the exception of high treason, while the actual decision is commonly cited as one of the leading judicial authorities for the general principle of the immunity of the confessor.