Chapter IV: Book XIII: 1 (1)

The Roman Embassy continued--Letter to Madame Récamier--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Conclaves--Dispatches to M. le Comte Portalis--Letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Letter to Madame Récamier--Letter to the Marchese Capponi--Letters to Madame Récamier--Letter to M. le Duc de Blacas--Letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Letter to Monseigneur le Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatches to M. le Comte Portalis--Fête at the Villa Medici for the Grand-duchess Helen--My relations and correspondence with the Bonaparte Family--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Monte Cavallo--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Letter to Madame Récamier--Presumption--The French in Rome--Walks--My nephew Christian de Chateaubriand--Letter to Madame Récamier--I return to Paris--My plans--The King and his disposition--M. Portalis--M. de Martignac--I leave for Rome--The Pyrenees--Adventures--The Polignac Ministry--My consternation--I come back to Paris--Interview with M. de Polignac--I resign my Roman Embassy.

ROME, 17 _February_ 1829.

Before passing to important matters, I will recall a few facts.

On the decease of the Sovereign Pontiff, the government of the Roman States falls into the hands of the three cardinals heads of the respective orders, deacon, priest and bishop, and of the Cardinal Camerlingo. The custom is for the ambassadors to go to compliment, in a speech, the Congregation of Cardinals who meet before the opening of the conclave at St. Peter's.

His Holiness' corpse, after first lying in state in the Sistine Chapel, was carried on Friday last, the 13th of February, to the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament at St. Peter's; it remained there till Sunday the 15th. Then it was laid in the monument which contained the ashes of Pius VII., and the latter were lowered into the subterranean church.

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"ROME, 17 _February_ 1829.

"I have seen Leo XII. lying in state, with his face uncovered, on a
paltry state bed, amid the master-pieces of Michael Angelo; I have
attended the first funeral ceremony in the Church of St. Peter.
A few old cardinal commissaries, no longer able to see, assured
themselves with their trembling fingers that the Pope's coffin was
well nailed down. By the light of the candles, mingling with the
moon-light, the coffin was at last raised by a pulley and hung up
in the shadows to be laid in the sarcophagus of Pius VII.[2]

"They have just brought me the poor Pope's little cat; it is quite
grey and very gentle, like its old master."

[Sidenote: Dispatch to Portalis.]

DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

"ROME, 17 February 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"I had the honour to inform you in my first letter carried to Lyons
with the telegraphic dispatch, and in my Dispatch No. 15, of the
difficulties which I encountered in sending off my two couriers
on the 10th of this month. These people have not got beyond the
history of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, as though the fact of the
death of a pope becoming known an hour sooner or an hour later
could cause an imperial army to enter Italy.

"The obsequies of the Holy Father were concluded on Sunday the
22nd, and the Conclave will open on Monday evening the 23rd, after
attending the Mass of the Holy Ghost in the morning; they are
already furnishing the cells in the Quirinal Palace.

"I shall not speak to you, monsieur le comte, of the views of the
Austrian Court or the wishes of the Cabinets of Naples, Madrid and
Turin. M. le Duc le Laval, in his correspondence with me in 1823,
has described the personal qualities of the cardinals, who are in
part those of to-day. I refer you to No. 5 and its appendix, Nos.
34, 55, 70 and 82. There are also in the boxes at the office some
notes from another source. These portraits, pretty, often fanciful,
are capable of providing amusement, but prove nothing. Three things
no longer make popes: the intrigues of women, the devices of the
ambassadors, the power of the Courts. Neither do they issue from
the general interest of society, but from the particular interest
of individuals and families, who seek places and money in the
election of the Head of the Church.

"There are immense things that could be effected nowadays by the
Holy See: the union of the dissenting sects, the consolidation
of European society, etc. A pope who would enter into the spirit
of the age and place himself at the head of the enlightened
generations might give fresh life to the Papacy; but these ideas
are quite unable to make their way into the old heads of the
Sacred College; the cardinals who have arrived at the end of life
hand down to one another an elective royalty which soon dies with
them: seated on the double ruins of Rome, the popes appear to be
impressed only with the power of death.

"Those cardinals elected Cardinal Della Genga[3], after the
exclusion of Cardinal Severoli, because they thought that he
was going to die; Della Genga taking it into his head to live,
they detested him cordially for that piece of deceit. Leo XII.
chose capable administrators from the convents; another cause
for murmuring for the cardinals. But, on the other hand, this
deceased Pope, while advancing the monks, wanted to see regularity
established in the monasteries, so that no one was grateful to him
for the boon. The arrest of the vagrant hermits, the compelling of
the people to drink standing in the street in order to prevent the
stabbing in the taverns, unfortunate changes in the collection of
the taxes, abuses committed by some of the Holy Father's familiars,
even the death of the Pope, occurring at a time which makes the
theatres and tradesmen of Rome lose the profit arising from the
follies of the Carnival, have caused the memory to be anathematized
of a Prince worthy of the liveliest regret; at Cività-Vecchia they
wanted to burn down the house of two men who were thought to be
honoured with his favour.

"Among many competitors, four are particularly designated: Cardinal
Capellari[4], the head of the Propaganda, Cardinal Pacca[5],
Cardinal Di Gregorio[6] and Cardinal Giustiniani[7].

"Cardinal Capellari is a learned and capable man. They say that he
will be rejected by the cardinals as being too young a monk and
unacquainted with worldly affairs. He is an Austrian and said to
be obstinate and ardent in his religious opinions. Nevertheless,
it was he who, when consulted by Leo XII., saw nothing in the
Orders in Council to warrant the complaint of our bishops; it was
he also who drew up the concordat between the Court of Rome and
the Netherlands and who was of opinion that canonical institution
should be granted to the bishops of the Spanish republics: all this
points to a reasonable, conciliatory and moderate spirit. I have
these details from Cardinal Bernetti, with whom, on Friday the
13th, I had one of the conversations which I announced to you in my
Dispatch No. 15.

"It is important to the Diplomatic Body, and especially to the
French Ambassador, that the Secretary of State in Rome should be a
man of ready intercourse and accustomed to the affairs of Europe.
Cardinal Bernetti is the minister who suits us best in every
respect; he has committed himself on our behalf with the _Zelanti_
and the members of the lay congregations; we are bound to wish that
he should be re-employed by the next Pope. I asked him with which
of the four cardinals he would have most chance of returning to
power. He answered:

"'With Capellari.'

"Cardinals Pacca and Di Gregorio are faithfully depicted in the
appendix to No. 5 of the correspondence already mentioned; but
Cardinal Pacca is very much enfeebled by age, and his memory, like
that of the Senior Cardinal, La Somaglia[8], is beginning to fail
him entirely.

[Sidenote: Candidates for the Papacy.]

"Cardinal Di Gregorio would be a suitable Pope. Although he ranks
among the _Zelanti_, he is not without moderation; he thrusts back
the Jesuits, who have as many adversaries and enemies here as in
France. Neapolitan subject though he be, Cardinal Di Gregorio is
rejected by Naples, and still more by Cardinal Albani[9], the
executor of the high decrees of Austria. The cardinal is Legate at
Bologna, he is over eighty and he is ill; there is therefore some
chance of his not coming to Rome.

"Lastly, Cardinal Giustiniani is the cardinal of the Roman
nobility; Cardinal Odescalchi is his nephew, and he will probably
receive a fairly good number of votes. But, on the other hand, he
is poor and has poor relations; Rome would fear the demands of this
indigence.

"You are aware, monsieur le comte, of all the harm that Giustiniani
did as Nuncio in Spain, and I am more aware of it than anyone else
through the troubles which he caused me after the delivery of King
Ferdinand. In the Bishopric of Imola, which the cardinal governs at
present, he has shown himself no more moderate; he has revived the
laws of St. Louis against blasphemers; he is not the pope of our
period. Apart from that, he is a man of some learning, a hebraist,
a hellenist, a mathematician, but better suited for the work of the
study than for public business. I do not believe that he is backed
by Austria.

"After all, human foresight is often deceived; often a man changes
on attaining power; the _zelante_ Cardinal Della Genga became the
moderate Pope Leo XII. Perhaps, amid the four competitors, a pope
will spring up, of whom no one is thinking at this moment. Cardinal
Castiglioni[10], Cardinal Benvenuti, Cardinal Galleffi[11],
Cardinal Arezzo[12], Cardinal Gamberini, and even the old and
venerable Dean of the Sacred College, La Somaglia, in spite of
his semi-childishness, or rather because of it, are presenting
themselves as candidates. The last has even some hope, because, as
he is Bishop and Prince of Ostia, his exaltation would bring about
alterations which would leave five great places free.

"It is expected that the Conclave will be either very long or very
short: there will be no systematic contests as at the time of the
decease of Pius VII.; the 'conclavists' and 'anti-conclavists'
have totally disappeared, which will make the election easier.
But, on the other hand, there will be personal struggles between
the candidates who assemble a certain number of votes, and, as it
requires only one more than a third of the votes of the Conclave
to give the _exclusive_, which must not be confounded with the
right of _exclusion_[13], the balloting among the candidates may be
prolonged.

"Does France wish to exercise the right of _exclusion_ which
she shares with Austria and Spain? Austria exercised it in the
preceding conclave against Severoli, through the intermediary of
Cardinal Albani. Against whom would the Crown of France exercise
that right? Would it be against Cardinal Fesch, if by chance he
were thought of, or against Cardinal Giustiniani? Would the latter
be worth the trouble of striking with this _veto_, always a little
odious, inasmuch as it trammels independence of election?

"To which of the cardinals would His Majesty's Government wish
to entrust the exercise of its right of exclusion? Does it wish
the French Ambassador to appear armed with the secret of his
Government, and as though ready to strike at the election of the
Conclave, if it were displeasing to Charles X.? Lastly, has the
Government a choice of predilection? Is there such or such a
cardinal whom it wants to support? Certainly, if all the cardinals
of family, that is to say the Spanish, Neapolitan and even
Piedmontese cardinals, would add their votes to those of the French
cardinals, if one could form a party of the crowns, we should gain
the day at the Conclave; but those coalitions are chimerical, and
we have foes rather than friends in the cardinals of the different
Courts.

[Sidenote: Reasons against interference.]

"It is asserted that the Primate of Hungary and the Archbishop of
Milan will come to the Conclave. The Austrian Ambassador in Rome,
Count Lützow, talks very cleverly of the conciliatory character
which the new Pope must have. Let us await the instructions of
Vienna.

"Moreover, I am persuaded that all the ambassadors on earth can do
nothing to-day to influence the election of the Sovereign Pontiff,
and that we are all perfectly useless in Rome. For the rest, I can
see no pressing interest in hastening or delaying (which, besides,
is in nobody's power) the operations of the Conclave. Whether the
non-Italian cardinals do or do not assist at this Conclave is of
the very slightest interest to the result of the election. If one
had millions to distribute, it might still be possible to make a
pope: I see no other means, and that method is not in keeping with
the customs of France.

"In my confidential instructions to M. le Duc de Laval, on the 13th
of September 1823, I said to him:

"'We ask that a prelate should be placed on the Pontifical Throne
who shall be distinguished for his piety and his virtues. We
desire only that he should possess sufficient enlightenment and
a sufficiently conciliatory spirit to enable him to judge the
political position of governments and not to throw them, owing to
useless exigencies, into inextricable difficulties as vexatious to
the Church as to the Throne.... We want a moderate member of the
Italian _zelante_ party, capable of being accepted by all parties.
All that we ask of them in our interest is not to seek to profit by
the divisions which may arise among our clergy in order to disturb
our ecclesiastical affairs.'

"In another confidential letter, written with reference to the
illness of the new Pope Della Genga, on the 28th of January 1824, I
again said to M. le Duc de Laval:

"'What we are concerned in obtaining (supposing there should be a
new conclave) is that the Pope should, through his inclinations,
be independent of the other Powers, that his principles should be
wise and moderate, and that he should be a friend of France.'

"Am I, monsieur le comte, to-day, to follow as ambassador the
spirit of those instructions which I gave as minister?

"This dispatch contains all. I shall only have to keep the King
succinctly informed of the operations of the Conclave and of the
incidents that may arise; the only questions will be the counting
of the votes and the variations of the suffrages.

"The cardinals favourable to the Jesuits are Giustiniani,
Odescalchi, Pedicini[14] and Bertalozzi[15].

"The cardinals opposed to the Jesuits, owing to different causes
and different circumstances, are Zurla[16], Di Gregorio, Bernetti,
Capellari and Micara[17].

"It is believed that, out of fifty-eight cardinals, only
forty-eight or forty-nine will attend the Conclave. In that case
thirty-three or thirty-four would effect the election.

"The Spanish Minister, M. de Labrador, a solitary and secluded man,
whom I suspect of being frivolous under an appearance of gravity,
is greatly embarrassed by the part he is called upon to play. The
instructions of his Court have foreseen nothing; he is writing in
that sense to His Catholic Majesty's _chargé d'affaires_ at Lucca.

"I have the honour to be, etc.

"P.S.-They say that Cardinal Benvenuti has already twelve votes
certain. If that choice succeeded, it would be a good one.
Benvenuti knows Europe and has displayed capacity and moderation in
different employments."

As the Conclave is about to open, I will rapidly trace the history of that great law of election, which already counts eighteen hundred years' duration. Where do the Popes come from? How have they been elected from century to century?

At the moment when liberty, equality and the Republic were completely expiring, about the time of Augustus, was born at Bethlehem the universal Tribune of the peoples, the great Representative on earth of equality, liberty and the Republic, Christ, who, after planting the Cross to serve as a boundary to two worlds, after allowing Himself to be nailed to that Cross, after dying on it, the Symbol, Victim and Redeemer of human sufferings, handed down His power to His Chief Apostle. From Adam to Jesus Christ, we have society with slaves, with inequality of men among themselves; from Jesus Christ to our time, we have society with equality of men among themselves, social equality of man and woman, we have society without slaves, or, at least, without the principle of slavery. The history of modern society commences at the foot and on this side of the Cross.

[Sidenote: The early Popes.]

Peter[18] Bishop of Rome inaugurated the Papacy: tribune-dictators successively elected by the people, and most part of the time chosen from among the humblest classes of the people, the Popes held their temporal power from the democratic order, from that new society of brothers which Jesus of Nazareth had come to found, Jesus, the workman, the maker of yokes and ploughs, born of a woman according to the flesh, and yet God and Son of God, as His works prove.

The Popes had the mission to avenge and maintain the rights of man; the heads of public opinion, all feeble though they were, they obtained the strength to dethrone kings with a word and an idea: for a soldier they had but a plebeian, his head protected by a cowl, his hand armed with a cross. The Papacy, marching at the head of civilization, progressed towards the goal of society. Christian men, in all regions of the globe, gave obedience to a priest whose name was hardly known to them, because that priest was the personification of a fundamental truth; he represented in Europe the political independence which was almost everywhere destroyed; in the Gothic world he was the defender of the popular liberties, as in the modern world he became the restorer of science, letters and the arts. The people enrolled itself among his troops in the habit of a mendicant friar.

The quarrel between the Empire and the priesthood is the struggle of the two social principles of the middle ages, power and liberty. The Popes, favouring the Guelphs, declared themselves for the governments of the peoples; the Emperors, adopting the Ghibellines, urged the government of the nobles: these were precisely the parts played by the Athenians and Spartans in Greece. Therefore, when the Popes took side with the kings, when they turned themselves into Ghibellines, they lost their power, because they were disengaging themselves from their natural principle, and, for an opposite and yet analogous reason, the monks have seen their authority decrease, when political liberty has returned directly to the peoples, because the peoples have no longer needed to be replaced by the monks, their representatives.

Those thrones declared vacant and delivered to the first occupant in the middle ages; those emperors who came on their knees to implore a pontiff's forgiveness; those kingdoms laid under an interdict; an entire nation deprived of worship by a magic word; those anathematized sovereigns, abandoned not only by their subjects, but also by their servants and kindred; those princes avoided like lepers, separated from the mortal race while waiting to be cut off from the eternal race; the food they had tasted, the objects they had touched passed through the flames as things sullied: all this was but the forceful effect of popular sovereignty delegated to and wielded by religion.

The oldest electoral law in the world is the law by virtue of which the pontifical power has been handed down from St. Peter to the priest who wears the tiara to-day: from that priest you go back from pope to pope till you come to saints who touch Christ; at the first link of the pontifical chain stands a God. The bishops were elected by the general assembly of the faithful; from the time of Tertullian[19], the Bishop of Rome was named the Bishop of Bishops. The clergy, forming part of the people, concurred in the election. As passions exist everywhere, as they debase the fairest institutions and the most virtuous characters, in the measure that the papal power increased, it attempted more, and human rivalries produced great disorders. In Pagan Rome, similar troubles had broken out on the occasion of the election of the Tribunes: of the two Gracchi, one[20] was flung into the Tiber, the other[21] stabbed by a slave in a wood consecrated to the Furies. The nomination of Pope Damasus[22], in 366, led to an affray attended by bloodshed: one hundred and thirty-seven people succumbed in the Sicinian Basilica, known to-day as Santa Maria Maggiore.

[Sidenote: History of their election.]

We find St. Gregory[23] elected Pope by the Clergy, the Senate and the People of Rome. Any Christian could rise to the tiara: Leo IV.[24] was promoted to the Sovereign Pontificate, on the 12th of April 847, to defend Rome against the Saracens, and his ordination deferred until he had given proofs of his courage. The same thing happened to the other bishops: Simplicius[25] ascended the See of Bourges, layman though he were. To this day (which is not generally known) the choice of the Conclave might fall on a layman, even if he were married: his wife would take the veil, and he would receive all the orders together with the papacy.

The Greek and Latin Emperors tried to suppress the liberty of the popular papal election; they sometimes usurped it, and often exacted that the election should at least be confirmed by them: a capitulary of Louis the Débonnaire[26] restores its primitive liberty to the election of the bishops, which was accomplished according to a treaty of the same time, by "the unanimous consent of the clergy and the people."

The dangers of an election proclaimed by the masses of the people or dictated by the emperors made necessary certain changes in the law. There existed, in Rome, priests and deacons known as "cardinals," whether because they served at the horns or corners of the altar, _ad cornua altaris_, or that the word cardinal is derived from the Latin word _cardo_, a hinge. Pope Nicholas II.[27], in a council held in Rome in 1059, carried a resolution that the cardinals alone should elect the popes and that the clergy and the people should ratify the election. One hundred and twenty years later, the Lateran Council[28] took away the ratification from the clergy and the people, and made the election valid by a majority of two-thirds of the votes in the assembly of cardinals.

But, as this canon of the Council fixed neither the duration nor the form of this electoral college, it came about that discord was produced among the electors, and there was no provision, in the new modification of the law, to put an end to that discord. In 1268, after the death of Clement IV.[29], the cardinals who had met at Viterbo were unable to come to an agreement, and the Holy See remained vacant for two years. The Podesta and the people were obliged to lock up the cardinals in their palace, and even, it is said, to unroof that palace in order to compel the electors to make a choice. At last Gregory X.[30] came out of the ballot, and thereupon, to remedy this abuse in future, established the Conclave, _cum clave_, with or under key; he regulated the internal dispositions of the Conclave in much the same manner as they exist to-day: separate cells, a common room for the balloting, walled-up outer windows, from one of which the election is proclaimed, by demolishing the plaster with which it is sealed, and so on. The Council held at Lyons in 1274 confirms and improves these arrangements. Nevertheless, one article of this rule has fallen into disuse: that in which it was laid down that, if the choice of a pope were not made in three days of confinement, during five days after those three days the cardinals should have only one dish at their meals, and that, after that, they should have only bread, wine and water until the Sovereign Pontiff was elected.

To-day the duration of a conclave is no longer limited, nor are the cardinals now punished in their diet, like naughty children. Their dinner, placed in baskets, carried on barrows, is brought to them from the outside, accompanied by lackeys in livery; a dapifer follows the convoy, sword at side, and drawn by caparisoned horses in the emblazoned coach of the cardinal recluse. On reaching the conclave tower, the chickens are drawn, the pies examined, the oranges cut into quarters, the corks of the bottles cut up, lest some paper should be concealed inside. These old customs, some childish, others ridiculous, have their drawbacks. If the dinner be sumptuous, the poor man starving of hunger who sees it go by makes his comparison and murmurs. If it be mean, by another infirmity of human nature, the pauper laughs at it and despises the Roman purple. It would be a good thing to abolish this usage, which is no longer in keeping with our present customs; Christianity has gone back to its source; it has returned to the time of the Lord's Supper and the love-feasts, and Christ alone should to-day preside over those banquets.

[Sidenote: Intrigues of the Conclaves.]

The intrigues of the conclaves are famous; some of them had baneful results. During the Western Schism, different popes and anti-popes were seen to curse and excommunicate one another from the top of the ruined walls of Rome. The schism seemed on the point of extinction, when Pedro de Luna[31] revived it, in 1394, through an intrigue of the conclave at Avignon. Alexander VI.[32], in 1492, bought the votes of twenty-two cardinals, who prostituted the tiara to him, leaving memories of Lucrezia[33] behind him. Sixtus V. had no intrigue in the conclave except with his crutches, and when he was Pope his genius no longer had need of those supports. I have seen in a Roman villa a portrait of Sixtus V.'s sister, a woman of the people, whom the terrible pontiff, in all his plebeian pride, pleased himself by having painted:

"The first arms of our house," he said to this sister, "are rags[34]."

That was still the time at which some sovereigns dictated orders to the Sacred College. Philip II. used to have notes passed into the conclave, saying:

"_Su Magestad no quiere que N. sea Papa; quiere que N. to tenga._"

From that period, the intrigues of the conclave are scarcely more than agitations without general results. Nevertheless, Du Perron[35] and d'Ossat obtained the reconciliation of Henry IV. with the Holy See, which was a great event. The _Ambassades_ of Du Perron are greatly inferior to the Letters of d'Ossat. Before then, Du Bellay was at one time on the point of preventing the schism of Henry VIII.[36] Having obtained from that tyrant, before his separation from the Church, that he should submit to the judgment of the Holy See, he arrived in Rome at the moment when the condemnation of Henry VIII. was about to be pronounced. He obtained a delay to send a man of trust to England; the bad roads retarded the reply. The partisans of Charles V. caused the sentence to be pronounced, and the bearer of the powers of Henry VIII. arrived two days later. The delay of a message made England Protestant and changed the political face of Europe. The destinies of the world depend on no more potent causes: a too capacious goblet emptied at Babylon caused Alexander to disappear.

Next comes to Rome, in the time of Olimpia[37], the Cardinal de Retz, who, in the conclave held after the death of Innocent X.[38], enlisted in the "flying squadron," the name given to ten independent cardinals; they carried with them "Sacchetti," who was "only good to paint," in order to pass Alexander VII.[39], _savio col silenzio_, who, as Pope, showed himself to be nothing much.

The Président de Brosses describes the death of Clement XII.[40], which he witnessed, and saw the election of Benedict XIV.[41]--as I saw Leo XII. the Pontiff lying dead on his abandoned bed: the Cardinal Camerlingo had struck Clement XII. twice or thrice on the forehead, according to the custom, with a little hammer, calling him by his name, Lorenzo Corsini.

"He made no reply," says de Brosses, and adds, "That is how your
daughter comes to be dumb[42]."

And that is how at that time the most serious things were treated: a dead pope at whose head one knocks as it were at the gate of understanding, while calling on the deceased and voiceless man by his name, could, it seems to me, have inspired a witness with something else than raillery, even though it were borrowed from Molière. What would the frivolous Dijon magistrate have said had Clement XII. answered him from the depths of eternity:

"What do you want with me?"

[Sidenote: Cynicism of de Brosses.]

The Président de Brosses sends his friend the Abbé Courtois a list of the cardinals of the Conclave, with a word on each of them to his honour:

"Guadagni[43], a bigot, a hypocrite, witless, tasteless, a poor
monk.

"Aquaviva of Aragon, a fine presence, although somewhat heavy in
figure, as he is also in mind.

"Ottoboni[44], no morals, no credit, debauched, ruined, a lover of
the arts.

"Alberoni[45], full of ardour, anxious, restless, despised, no
morals, no decency, no consideration, no judgment: according to
him, a cardinal is a ----- dressed in red."

The rest of the list is all of a piece; cynicism here takes the place of wit.

A singular piece of buffoonery took place: de Brosses went to dine with some Englishmen at the Porta San Pancrazio; they had a mock election of a pope: a certain Sir Ashwood took off his wig and represented the dean of the cardinals; they sang _Oremus_, and Cardinal Alberoni was elected by the ballot of that orgy. The Protestant soldiers in the Constable de Bourbon's army nominated Martin Luther pope in the Church of St. Peter. Nowadays the English, who are at once the plague and the providence of Rome, respect the Catholic Religion which has permitted them to build a church outside the Porta del Popolo. The government and manners of the day would no longer suffer such scandals.

So soon as a cardinal is imprisoned in the conclave, the first thing he does is, with the aid of his servants, in the dark, to scratch at the newly blocked-up walls until they have made a little hole. Through this, during the night, they pass strings by means of which news is sent and received between the inside and the outside. For the rest, the Cardinal de Retz, whose opinion is above suspicion, after speaking of the miseries of the conclave in which he took part, ends his story with these fine words:

"We lived there, always together, with the same mutual respect and
the same civility that are observed in the closets of kings; with
the same politeness that obtained at the Court of Henry III.; with
the same familiarity that is seen in the colleges; with the same
modesty that prevails in noviciates, and the same charity, at least
in appearance, that might exist among brothers wholly united."

I am struck, in finishing this epitome of a vast history, by the serious manner in which it commences and the almost burlesque manner in which it ends: the greatness of the Son of God opens the scene which, shrinking in proportion as the Catholic Religion moves farther from its source, ends in the littleness of the son of Adam. We scarcely find again the primitive loftiness of the Cross until we come to the decease of the Sovereign Pontiff: that childless, friendless pope, whose corpse lies neglected on its couch, shows that the man was reckoned as naught in the head of the evangelical world. Honours are rendered to the Pope as a temporal prince; as a man, his abandoned corpse is flung down at the door of the church where of old the sinner did penance.

[Sidenote: Dispatches to Portalis.]

DISPATCHES TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

"ROME, 17 _February_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"I do not know whether the King will be pleased to send an
extraordinary ambassador to Rome, or whether it will suit him to
accredit me to the Sacred College. In the latter case, I have the
honour to observe to you that I allowed M. le Duc de Laval, for his
expenses for extraordinary service in a similar circumstance, in
1823, a sum which amounted, as far as I can remember, to 40,000 or
50,000 francs. The Austrian Ambassador, M. le Comte d'Apponyi[46],
at first received from his Court a sum of 36,000 francs for the
first requirements, a supplementary allowance of 7,200 francs per
month over and above his ordinary salary during the sitting of the
Conclave, and 10,000 francs for presents, chancery expenses, etc.
I do not, monsieur le comte, pretend to compete in magnificence
with His Excellency the Austrian Ambassador, as M. le Duc de Laval
did; I shall hire no horses, carriages, nor liveries to dazzle the
Roman mob; the King of France is a great enough lord to pay for the
pomp of his ambassadors, if he wishes it: borrowed magnificence is
wretched. I shall therefore go modestly to the Conclave with my
ordinary footmen and in my ordinary carriages. It only remains for
me to know whether the King will not think that, as long as the
Conclave lasts, I shall be bound to keep up a display for which
my ordinary salary will not be sufficient I ask nothing, I merely
submit the question to your judgment and to the royal decision.

"I have the honour to be, etc."

"ROME, 19 _February_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"I had the honour yesterday to be presented to the Sacred College
and to deliver the little speech of which I sent you a copy in
advance in my Dispatch No. 17, which left on Tuesday the 17th inst.
by a special courier. I was listened to with the most auspicious
marks of satisfaction, and the Senior Cardinal, the venerable Della
Somaglia, replied to me in terms most affectionate towards the King
and France.

"Having informed you of everything in my last dispatch, I have
absolutely nothing new to tell you to-day, unless it be that
Cardinal Bussi[47] arrived yesterday from Benevento. Cardinals
Albani, Macchi[48], and Oppizzoni are expected to-day.

"The members of the Sacred College will lock themselves up in the
Quirinal Palace on Monday evening the 23rd of this month. Ten days
will then elapse to await the arrival of the foreign cardinals,
after which the serious operations of the Conclave will commence,
and, if they were to come to an understanding at once, the pope
could be elected in the first week of Lent.

"I am, monsieur le comte, awaiting the King's orders. I presume
that you dispatched a courier to me after M. de Montebello's
arrival in Paris. It is urgent that I should receive either the
announcement of an extraordinary embassy, or my new credentials
together with the instructions of the Government.

"Are my five French cardinals coming? Politically speaking,
their presence here is very little necessary. I have written to
Monseigneur le Cardinal de Latil[49] to offer him my services in
case he should decide to come,

"I have the honour to be, etc.

"_P.S._ I enclose a copy of a letter which M. le Comte de Funchal
has written to me. I have not replied to this ambassador in
writing; I only went to talk to him."

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"ROME, _Monday_ 23 _February_ 1829.

"Yesterday the Pope's obsequies were finished. The pyramid of
'paper' and the four candelabra were fine enough, because they
were of immense proportions and reached up to the cornice of the
church. The last _Dies iræ_ was admirable. It is composed by an
unknown man, who belongs to the pope's chapel, and who seems to me
to possess a very different sort of genius from Rossini's. To-day
we pass from sorrow to joy; we sing the _Veni Creator_ for the
opening of the Conclave; then we shall go every evening to see if
the ballot-papers are burnt, if the smoke issues from a certain
chimney: on the day on which there is no smoke, the pope will
have been appointed, and I shall go to see you again; that is the
whole business as it affects me. The King of England's speech is
very insolent to France! What a deplorable expedition that Morean
Expedition is! Are they beginning to see it? General Guilleminot
wrote me a letter on the subject which made me laugh; he can only
have written as he did because he presumed me to be a minister."

[Sidenote: Letters to Madame Récamier.]

"25 _February._

"Death is here; Torlonia went yesterday evening after two days'
illness; I have seen him lying all painted on his death-bed, his
sword at his side. He lent money on pledges, but on such pledges!
On antiquities, on pictures huddled promiscuously in an old, dusty
palace. That was different from the shop in which the Miser put
away 'a Bologna lute, fitted with all its strings, or nearly... the
skin of a lizard three feet long... and a four-foot bedstead with
slips in Hungarian point[50].'

"One sees nothing but dead people carried dressed-up through the
streets; one of them passes regularly under my windows when we
sit down to dinner. For the rest, everything proclaims the spring
parting; people are beginning to disperse; they are leaving for
Naples; they will come back a moment for Holy Week, and then
separate for good. Next year there will be different travellers,
different faces, a different society. There is something melancholy
in this journey over ruins: the Romans are like the remains of
their city; the world passes at their feet. I picture those persons
going back to their families in the various countries of Europe,
the young 'Misses' returning to the midst of their fogs. If, by
chance, thirty years hence, one of them is brought back to Italy,
who will remember to have seen her in the palaces whose masters
shall be no more. St. Peter's and the Coliseum: that is all that
she herself would recognise."

DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

"ROME, 3 _March_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"My first courier having reached Lyons, on the 14th of last month,
at nine o'clock in the evening, you must have learned the news of
the Pope's death, by telegraph, on the morning of the 15th. It
is to-day the 3rd of March, and I am still without instructions
and without an official reply. The newspapers have announced the
departure of two or three cardinals. I had written to Paris to
Monseigneur le Cardinal de Latil to place the Embassy Palace at his
disposal; I have just written to him again at different points on
his road to renew my offers.

"I am sorry to be obliged to tell you, monsieur le comte, that I
notice some little intrigues here to keep the cardinals away from
the Embassy, to lodge them where they might be placed more within
reach of the influences which it is hoped to exercise over them.

"As far as I am concerned, this is a matter of indifference to me.
I shall show Their Eminences all the services which depend upon
myself. If they question me touching things which it is well that
they should know, I shall tell them what I can; if you transmit
the King's orders for them to me, I will communicate these to
them; but, if they were to arrive here in a spirit hostile to the
views of His Majesty's Government, if it were perceived that they
were not in agreement with the King's Ambassador, if they held a
language contrary to mine, if they went so far as to give their
votes in the Conclave to some exaggerated man, if even they were
divided among themselves, nothing would be more fatal. It would
be better for the King's service that I should instantly hand in
my resignation rather than present this public spectacle of our
discords. Austria and Spain have a line of conduct with reference
to their clergy which leaves no opening for intrigue. No Austrian
or Spanish priest, cardinal or bishop, can have any other agent or
correspondent in Rome than the ambassador of his Court himself; the
latter has the right to remove from Rome, at a moment's notice, any
ecclesiastic of his nationality who may obstruct him.

"I hope, monsieur le comte, that no division will take place, that
Their Eminences the cardinals will have formal orders to submit to
the instructions which I shall before long receive from you, and
that I shall know which of them will be charged with the exercise
of the exclusion, in case of need, and which heads that exclusion
is to strike.

"It is very necessary that we should be on our guard; the last
ballots revealed the awakening of a party. This party, which gave
twenty or twenty-one votes to Cardinals Della Marmora[51] and
Pedicini, forms what is known here as the Sardinian faction. The
other cardinals, alarmed, want all to give their suffrages to
Oppizzoni, a man both firm and moderate. Although an Austrian,
that is to say, a Milanese, he coped against Austria at Bologna.
He would be an excellent choice. The votes of the French might,
by settling on one candidate or another, decide the election.
Rightly or wrongly, these cardinals are believed to be hostile to
the present system of His Majesty's Government, and the Sardinian
faction is reckoning on them.

"I have the honour to be, etc[52]."

[Sidenote: To Portalis and Récamier.]

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

"ROME, 3 _March_ 1829.

"I am quite surprised at your acquaintance with the story of my
excavation; I did not remember having written you so well on that
subject. I am, as you think, very busy: left without directions
or instructions, I am obliged to take everything upon myself. I
believe, however, that I can promise you a moderate and enlightened
pope, if God only grant that he be made at the expiration of the
interim of M. Portalis' ministry."

"4 _March._

"Yesterday, Ash Wednesday, I was on my knees alone in the Church of
Santa Croce, which rests against the walls of Rome, near the Porta
di Napoli. I heard the monotonous and lugubrious chanting of the
monks within that solitude: I should have liked myself to be in a
frock, singing among those ruins. What a spot to appease ambition
and to contemplate the vanities of earth! While I am suffering,
I hear that M. de La Ferronnays is getting better; he rides on
horseback, and his convalescence is looked upon in the country as
miraculous: God grant that it be so, and that he may resume work at
the end of the interim. What a number of questions that would solve
for me!"

[Sidenote: Dispatch to Portalis.]

DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS

"_Sunday_[53] 15 _March_ 1829.

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,

"I have had the honour to inform you of the successive arrivals of
their Eminences the French cardinals. Three of them, Messieurs de
Latil, de La Fare[54] and de Croy[55] have done me the honour to
be my guests. The first entered the Conclave on Thursday evening
the 12th, with M. le Cardinal Isoard[56]; the two others locked
themselves in on Friday evening the 13th.

"I told them all I know; I gave them important notes on the
minority and majority in the Conclave, and on the sentiments which
animate the different parties. We agreed that they should support
the candidates of whom I have already spoken to you, namely,
Cardinals Capellari, Oppizzoni, Benvenuti, Zurla, Castiglioni
and, lastly, Pacca and Di Gregorio; and that they should reject
the cardinals of the Sardinian faction: Pedicini, Giustiniani,
Galleffi, and Cristaldi[57].

"I hope that this good intelligence between the ambassadors and
cardinals will have the best effect: at least I shall have nothing
with which to reproach myself if passions or interests intervene to
deceive my hopes.

"I have, monsieur le comte, discovered dangerous and contemptible
intrigues carried on between Paris and Rome through the channel
of Monsignor Lambruschini, the Nuncio[58]. It was no less a
question than to cause to be read, in open conclave, a copy of
some pretended secret instructions, divided into several clauses
and given (so it was impudently asserted) to M. le Cardinal de
Latil. The majority of the Conclave has pronounced strongly against
these machinations; it wished the Nuncio to be instructed to break
off all relations with those men of discord who, while troubling
France, would end by making the Catholic Religion hateful to all.
I am, monsieur le comte, making a collection of these authentic
revelations, and I will send it to you after the election of the
pope: that will be worth more than all the dispatches in the
world. The King will learn to know who are his friends and who his
enemies, and the Government will be able to rely on facts suited to
guide its conduct

"Your Dispatch No. 14 informs me of the encroachments which His
Holiness' Nuncio endeavoured to renew in France in connection with
the death of Leo XII. The same thing had happened before, when
I was Foreign Minister, at the time of the death of Pius VII.:
fortunately, we always have means of defending ourselves against
those public attacks; it is much more difficult to escape the plots
laid in the dark.

"The conclavists who accompany our cardinals appeared to me to be
reasonable men: the Abbé Coudrin[59] alone, whom you mentioned to
me, is one of those cramped and narrow minds into which nothing
can enter, one of those men who have mistaken their profession.
As you are well aware, he is a monk, head of an order, and he even
has bulls of institution: this is but little in agreement with our
civil laws and our political institutions.

"It may happen that the pope will be elected at the end of this
week. But, if the French cardinals fail to make their presence
felt at once, it will become impossible to assign a limit to the
duration of the Conclave. New combinations would perhaps bring
about an unexpected nomination: to have done with it, they might
agree on some insignificant cardinal, such as Dandini[60].

"In times gone by, monsieur le comte, I have found myself placed
in difficult circumstances, whether as Ambassador to London, or as
Minister during the Spanish War, or as a member of the House of
Peers, or Leader of the Opposition; but nothing has given me so
much anxiety and care as my present position in the midst of every
kind of intrigue. I have to act upon an invisible body locked up in
a prison, the approaches to which are strictly guarded. I have no
money to give, no places to promise; the decaying passions of fifty
old men give me no hold on them. I have to fight against stupidity
in some, against ignorance of the times in others; fanaticism in
these, craft and duplicity in those; in almost all, ambition,
self-interest, political hatred: and I am separated by walls and
mysteries from the assembly in which so many elements of division
are fermenting. At each moment, the scene varies; every quarter of
an hour, contradictory reports plunge me into fresh perplexities.
I am not, monsieur le comte, telling you of these difficulties
to show my importance, but rather to serve as my excuse in case
the election should result in a pope contrary to what it seems
to promise and to the nature of our wishes. At the time of the
death of Pius VII., public opinion was not excited over religious
questions: to-day, these questions have begun to play their part in
politics, and never did the election of the Head of the Church fall
at a less auspicious moment

"I have the honour to be, etc."

[Sidenote: Letter to Madame Récamier.]

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

ROME, 17 _March_ 1829.

"The King of Bavaria[61] has called in mufti to see me. We spoke of
you. This 'Greek' sovereign, though he wears a crown, seems to know
what he has on his head, and to understand that you cannot nail the
present to the past. He is to dine with me on Thursday, and wants
no one there.

"For the rest, behold us in the midst of great events: a pope to be
made; what will he be like? Will Catholic Emancipation be passed?
A new campaign in the East: on which side will victory be? Shall
we profit by this position? Who will conduct our affairs? Is there
a head capable of perceiving all that this contains for France
and of profiting by it according to events? I am persuaded that
they do not so much as think of it in Paris and that, what with
the salons and the Chambers, pleasures and legislation, worldly
joys and ministerial anxieties, they don't trouble about Europe or
anything else. Only I myself, in my exile, have time to indulge in
dreams and to look about me. Yesterday I went for a walk in a sort
of gale on the old Tivoli Road. I came to the old Roman pavement,
which is so well preserved that one would believe it had been newly
laid. Yet Horace had trod the stones which I was treading: where is
Horace?"

The Marquis Capponi[62] arrived from Florence, bringing me letters of recommendation from ladies in Paris. I replied to one of these letters on the 21st of March 1829:

"I have received your letters: the services I am able to do are
nothing, but I am entirely at your orders. I was already well
acquainted with the Marquis Capponi's merits. I can tell you that
he is still good-looking; he has weathered time. I did not answer
your first letter, so full of enthusiasm for the sublime Mahmud
and for 'disciplined' barbarism, for those slaves 'bastinadoed'
into soldiers[63]. I can imagine that women are carried away with
admiration for men who marry hundreds of them at a time, and that
they take that for the progress of enlightenment and civilization;
but, as for me, I cling to my poor Greeks; I desire their liberty
as I do that of France. I also want frontiers which will cover
Paris and ensure our independence; and it is not by means of the
triple alliance of the pale of Constantinople, the _schlag_ of
Vienna and the fisticuffs of London that you will obtain the bank
of the Rhine. Many thanks for the fur-coat of honour which our
glory might obtain from the invincible Commander of the Faithful,
who has not yet sallied from the outskirts of his seraglio; I
prefer that glory naked; she is a woman and beautiful: Phidias
would certainly never have robed her in a Turkish dressing-gown."

TO MADAME RÉCAMIER

ROME, 21 _March_ 1829.

"Well, I am right and you are wrong! I went yesterday, between
two ballots and while waiting for a pope, to Sant' Onofrio: and
it is two _orange-trees_ that grow in the cloister, and not an
evergreen oak. I am quite proud of this fidelity of my memory. I
ran, almost with my eyes shut, to the little stone that covers your
friend; I prefer it to the great monument they are going to raise
to him. What a charming solitude! What an admirable view! What
happiness to lie there between the frescoes of Domenichino[64] and
Leonardo da Vinci! I wish I were there, I never felt so tempted.
Did they let you enter the interior of the convent? Did you see,
in a long corridor, that delicious, though half-obliterated, head
of a Madonna by Leonardo da Vinci? Did you see in the library
Tasso's mask, his withered laurel-wreath, a mirror which he used,
his ink-stand, his pen and the letter written by his hand, pasted
to a board that hangs below his bust? In this letter, in a small,
scratched-out, but easily legible hand, he speaks of 'friendship'
and the 'wind of fortune;' the latter scarcely ever blew for him,
and the former often failed him.

"No pope yet, we expect him hourly; but, if the choice has been
delayed, if obstacles have arisen on every hand, it is not my
fault: they ought to have listened to me a little more, and not
acted in a sense exactly opposite to that which they seemed to
decide upon. For the rest, it seems to me at present that every one
wants to be at peace with me. The Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre
himself has just written to tell me that he claims my former
kindness for him; and after all that he comes to stay with me
resolved to vote for the most moderate pope.

"You have read my second speech. Thank M. Kératry[65], who has
spoken so obligingly of the first; I hope he will be still more
pleased with the other. We shall both of us try to make liberty
Christian, and we shall succeed. What do you say to the answer
Cardinal Castiglioni made me? Have I been finely enough praised 'in
open conclave'? You could not have done better in the days when you
spoilt me."

[Sidenote: Letters to Madame Récamier.]

"24 _March_ 1829.