 Book 13, Part 1 of the Mamosa Chateaubriand, Volume 5. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Nicole Lee, the Mamosa Chateaubriand, Volume 5, by François René de Chateaubriand translated by Alexander Tixera de Matos. Book 13, Part 1. Rome, 17 February 1829 Before passing to important matters, I will recall a few facts. On the deceased 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, Camilingo. 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 will load it into the subterranean church. To Madame Recamier, Rome, 17 February 1829 I have seen Leo XII lying in state, with his face uncovered, on a paltry state bed, amid the masterpieces of Michelangelo. 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 moonlight, the coffin was at last raised by a pulley, and hung up in the shadows to be laid in the sarcophagus of Pius VII. They have just brought me the poor pope's little cat. It is quite grey, and very gentle, like its old master. Dispatch to Monsieur Laconte Portanis, Rome, 17 February 1829 Monsieur Laconte. I have the honour to inform you in my first letter carried to Lyon with the telegraphic dispatch, and in my dispatch number fifteen, of the difficulties which I encountered in sending off my two couriers on the tenth of this month. These people have not got beyond the history of the girls and gibbalines, as say 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 their cells in the coronal palace. I shall not speak to you, Monsieur Laconte, of the views of the Austrian court, or the wishes of the cabinets of Naples, Madrid and Turin. Monsieur Lucille de Laval, in his correspondence with me in 1823, has described the personal qualities of the cardinals, who are in part those of today. I refer you to number five and its appendix, numbers thirty-four, fifty-five, seventy, and eighty-two. They 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 interests of society, but from the particular interests of individuals and families, who seek places and money in the election of the head of the church. There are many 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, and 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 selected Cardinal de la Jenga, after the exclusion of Cardinals severally, because they thought that he was going to die. De la Jenga taking it into his head to live, they detested him cordially for that piece of deceit. Lea 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, 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 cardinal, have caused the memory to be anathematized or a prince worthy of the libelous regret. At Chibi Tavecchia, 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 Capillari, the head of the propaganda, Cardinal Paca, Cardinal Gregorio, and Cardinal Justiniani. Cardinal Capillari is a learned and capable man. They say that he would 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 odd 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 concoit d'art 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 these points to a reasonable conciliatory and moderate spirit. I have these details from Cardinal Benetti, 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 intercools, and accustomed to the affairs of Europe. Cardinal Benetti is the minister who suits us best in every respect. He has committed himself on our behalf with a zealante and 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 capillary. Cardinals Pacca and Gregorio are faithfully depicted in the appendix to No. 5 of the correspondence already mentioned. Cardinal Pacca is very much enfeeble by age and his memory, like that of the senior Cardinal, La Somalia, is beginning to fail him entirely. Cardinal de Gregorio would be a suitable pope. Although he ranks among the zealante, he is not without moderation. He thrust back the Jesuits, who have as many adversaries and enemies here as in France. Neapolitan subject though he be, Cardinal de Gregorio is rejected by Naples, and still more by Cardinal Albani, the executor of the High Decrees of Austria. The Cardinal is ligate, a 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 Orescalchi 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 indigance. You are aware, Monsieur Laconte, 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 hebrist, a Hellenist, a mathematician, but best is used for the work of the study done for public business. I do not believe that he is backed by Austria. After all, human foresight is often deceived, often a man changers on attaining power. The Zelante Cardinal de la 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 Castiglione, Cardinal Benvenuti, Cardinal Galefi, Cardinal Arezzo, Cardinal Gamberini, and even the old and venerable dean of the Sacred College, La Somalia, 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 Austria, 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 conclavis and anti-conclavis have totally disappeared, which would make the election easier. But on the other hand there would 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. 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 severely, through the intermediary of Cardinal Albani. Against whom would the Crown of France exercise outright? 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 is ready to strike at the election of the conclave, if it were displeasing to Charles Attemp? Lastly, has the government a choice of predilection? Is there such or such a Cardinal whom it wants to support? Certainly, of 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. It is asserted that the primate of Hungary and the Archbishop of Milan will come to the conclave. The Austrian ambassador in Rome, Count Lutzau, talks very cleverly of the conciliatory character which the Neapolitan must have. Let us await the instructions of Vienna. Moreover, I am persuaded that all the ambassadors on earth can do nothing today 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 Missila Dut 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 Deleg Jenga, on the 28th of January, 1824, I again said to Missila Dut 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, Missila Kant, today, 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 suffragists. The cardinals favourable to the Jesuits are Justiniani, Ores Calchi, Pedicini and Botalazzi. The cardinals are opposed to the Jesuits, owing to different causes and different circumstances. Azula, de Gregorio, Bonetti, Capillaria, Mechara. 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 will effect the election. The Spanish minister, Missila Labrador, a solitary and secluded man, whom I suspect of being frivolous under an appearance of gravity, is greatly embarrassed by the parties called upon to play. The instructions of his court have foreseen nothing. He is writing in that sense to his Catholic majesties, Chaget d'affaires et Luka. 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 election, which already counts 1,800 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 redeem 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. Peter, 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 as his works prove. The peps had the mission to avenge or maintain the rights of man. The heads of public opinion, or feeble though they were, they obtained the strength to dethrone kings with a word and an idea. For 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 cause. 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 odds. 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, declared themselves for the governments of the peoples. The emperors, adopting the gibbalines, 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 gibbalines 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 the 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 Pontiff's forgiveness. Those kingdoms laid under an interdict, an entire nation deprived of worship by a magic word. Those anathematized sovereigns abandon not only by their subjects, but also by their servants who subverted 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 solid. All this was by 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 from east 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 the Bishop of Rome was named the Bishop of Bishops. They clergy, forming part of the people, concurred in the election. As passions exist everywhere, as they debase from the fairest people 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 Tugrachae one was flung into the Tiber, the other stabbed by a slave in a wood consecrated to the furies. The nomination of Pope Damasus in 366 led to an affair attended by bloodshed. 137 people succumbed in the Santa Maria Magioli. We find St. Gregory elected Pope by the clergy, the senate and the people of Rome. Any christian could rise to the tiara. Leo IV was promoted to the sovereign pontificate on 12 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. Simplicus ascended the sea of Rome. The choice of the conclave might fall on Elayma, even if you 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 the clergy and the people. The dangers of an election proclaimed by the masses of the people, or dictated by the emperors, may necessary certain changes in the law. They existed in Rome priests and deacons known as cardinals, whether because they served at the horns or corners of the altar, at Cornuat Altaris, or that the word cardinal is derived from and that the clergy and the people should ratify the election. One hundred and twenty years later the Lateran council 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 debate after the death of Clement IV. 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 palaces, and even it is said to unroof their palaces in order to compel the electors to make a choice. At last Gregory X came out of the ballot, and thereupon to remedy this abuse in future established the conclave, Cumclave, with or under key. These positions of the conclave in much the same manner as they exist today. Separate cells, a common room for the balloting, walled up out of 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 Lyon 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 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. Today 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 dapper follows the convoys on its side and drawn by capers and horses and blaze and 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, unless 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 and surprises 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 Supper and the Love Feast and Christ alone should today preside over those banquets. The intrigues of the conclaves are famous some of them had baneful results. During the western schism different popes and antipopes were seen to curse and excommunicate one another from the top seemed on the point of extinction when Pedro de Luna revived it in 1394 through an intrigue of the conclave at Avignon. Alexander VI in 1492 bought the votes of 22 cardinals who prostituted the tiara to him leaving memories of Lucretia 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 a woman of the people whom the terrible Pontiff in all his plebeian pride pleased himself by having painted the first arms of a house he said to the sister are rags. That was still the time after which some sovereigns dictated orders to the sacred college. Philip II used to have notes passed into the conclave saying From that period the intrigues of the conclave had scarcely more than agitations without general results. Nevertheless Duperin and Dossin obtained the reconciliation of Henry IV with the Holy See which was a great event. The ambassade of Duperin are greatly inferior to the letters of Dossin. Before then Jubilee was at one time on the point of preventing the schism of Henry VIII 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 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 a sentence to be pronounced and the bearer of the paths 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 tooth-capacious goblet emptied at Babylon caused Alexander to disappear. Next comes to Rome in the time of Olympia, the Cardinal Directs who, in the conclave, held after the death of Innocent X and listed 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, Savio Col Silenzio who as Pope showed himself to be nothing much. The President de Vros describes the death of Clement XII which he witnessed and saw the election of Benedict XIV. As I saw Leo XII the pontiff lying dead on his abandoned bed the Cardinal Camilingo had struck Clement XII twice or thrice on the forehead according to the custom with a little hammer calling him by his name Lorenzo Cossini he made no reply says de Vros and adds that is how your daughter comes to be done and that is how at that time the most serious things were treated 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 railway even though it were borrowed from Olier what would the frivolous Dijon Magistrate have said had Clement XII answered him from the depths of eternity what do you want with me The President de Vros sends his friend the Abbe Courtois a list of the Cardinals and the word on each of them to his honour Guadani a bigot a hypocrite witless tasteless a poor monk a coviva of Aragon a fine presence although somewhat heavy in figure as he is also in mind Ottoboni no morals no credit debauched ruined a love of the arts Arberoni full of ardour anxious restless despised no morals no decency no admiration no judgement 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 Vros went to dine with some Englishmen at the Porta San Pancrazio they had a mock election of a pope a certain Sir Ashwin took off his wig and represented the Dean of the Cardinals they sang Oremus and Cardinal Arberoni 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 de Popolo the government and Manus of the day would no longer suffer such scandals so soon as the 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 live 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 obtain at the court of Henry III with the same familiarity that is seen in the colleges with the same modesty that prevails in novitiates 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 less manner in which it ends the greatness of the Son of God opens a scene which shrinking in proportion as the Catholic religion moves further 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 nought in the head of the evangelical world honors 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 all the sinner did penance dispatch us to Missila Conte Portalis Rome 17th February 1829 Missila Conte 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 that I have observed to you that I allowed Missila Dutid 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 Missila Conte Apogne I had 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 transfer expenses et cetera I do not Missila Conte pretend to compete in magnificence with his excellency the Austrian ambassador as Missila Dutid 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 Richard I shall therefore go modestly 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 et cetera Rome 19th February 1829 Missila Conte I had the honour yesterday to be presented to the sacred college and to deliver the little speech of which I sent you a coffee in advance in my dispatch number 17 which left on Tuesday the 17th instant by a special courier I was listened to with the most auspicious marks of satisfaction and the senior cardinal the venerable Dele Somalia 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 today unless it be that Cardinal Busse arrived yesterday from Benivento Cardinals Arbani, Maki and Opitzoni are expected today The members of the sacred college will lock themselves up in the coronal palace on Monday evening the 23rd of this month 10 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 Missila Conta awaiting the king's orders I presume that you dispatched a courier to me after Missila Montabello'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 Monsignor Le Cardinal de Latille 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 Missila Conta Funchal has written to me I have not replied to this ambassador in writing I only went to talk to him To Madame Recamier Rome Monday 23rd February 1829 Yesterday the pope's obsequies were finished The pyramid of paper and the four candelabra were fine enough First they were of immense proportions and reached up to the corners of the church The last year's era 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 Today we pass from sorrow to joy We sing the veiny créateur for the opening of the conclave Then we shall go every evening to see if the ballot papers are burnt if there's smoke issues from a certain chimney On the day on which there's 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 Moréan expedition is Are they beginning to see it? General Gris-Lenimot 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 25th February Death is here Bologna went yesterday evening after two days illness I have seen him lying all painted on his deathbed his sword at his side He learned 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 loot 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 Once he's 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's something men and colleagues 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 missus 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 master shall be no more St. Peter's and the Coliseum that is all that she herself would recognize Dispatched to Missila Conte Portalis Rome 3rd March 1829 Missila Conte My first courier having reached Lyon on the fourteenth 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 fifteenth It is today the third 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 have written to Paris to Monsignor and Le Cardinal de Latille to place the Embassy Palace at its 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, Missila Conte that I noticed 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 may obstruct him I hope, Missila Conte, that no division will take place that the 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 balance reveal the awakening of a party This party, which gave twenty or twenty-one votes to cardinals della Mamora and Petticini forms what is known here as the Sardinian faction The other cardinals, alarmed, want all to give their suffragists to Opitzoni a man both firm and moderate although an Austrian, that is to say a Milanese he coped against Austria a Bologna He would be an excellent choice The vote to the French might by settling on one candidate or another decide the election Rightly or wrongly these cardinals I believe 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. To Madame Rikamié, Rome, 3rd March, 1829 I am quite surprised at your cointence 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 at the expiration of the interim of Monsieur Portales' ministry 4th 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 Monsieur de la Ferronnay 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 I would solve for me Dispatched to Monsieur Lecombe Portales Sunday, 15th March, 1829 Monsieur Lecombe I have had the honour to inform you of the successive arrivals of their eminences the French Cardinals Three of them, M. de la Tille, de la Ferre and de Croix, have done me the honour to be my guest The first sent to the conclave on Thursday evening the 12th with M. Le Cardinal Isard 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 the different parties We agree that they should support the candidates of whom I have already spoken to you namely Cardinals Capillari, Opidzoni Bevenuti, Zola, Castiglioni and lastly Paca and Iguigoro and that they should reject the Cardinals of the Sardinian faction Petticini, Giustiniani Galefi and Cristaldi I hope that this good intelligence between the ambassadors and Cardinals will have the best effect At least I shall have nothing with which myself if passions or interests intervene to deceive my hopes I have M. Le Conte discovered dangerous and contemptible intrigues carried on between Paris and Rome through the channel of M. Lombreschini The Nuncio 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 assert was impudently asserted to M. Le Cardinal de Latille 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 M. Le Conte 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 dispatchers 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 guided conduct Your dispatch number 14 informs me of the encroachments which is Holiness Nuncio endeavored to renew in France in connection with the death of Leo XII The same thing had happened before when I as foreign minister at the time of the death of Paris 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 conclavious who come near Cardinals appeared to me to be reasonable men The Abe Kudran 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 filtered once it will become impossible to assign and emit 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 In times gone by, Monsieur Le Conte 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 tracked 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 gave me no hold on them I have to fight against stupidity at most of the times in others for Nazism in these craft and duplicity in those enormous 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 perplexed days I am not Monsieur Le Conte telling you of these difficulties to show my importance 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 Today 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. To my name we come here Rome 17th March 1829 The King of Bavaria 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 die with me on Thursday and wants no one there For the rest behold us in the midst of great events of hope 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 fares Is their head capable of perceiving all that this contains for France and are profiting by it according to events I am persuaded that they do not so much as think of it in Paris and that whatever the salons and the chambers pleasure 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 about me Yesterday I went for 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's Horace? The Marquis's company 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 am able to do nothing but I am entirely at your orders I was already well acquainted with the Marquis Capone'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 modern world and for discipline barbarism for those slaves bastionadoed into soldiers I can imagine that women I carried away with admiration for men who marry hundreds of them at a time of civilisation 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 Schlage of Vienna and the Fisticouse of London that you will obtain the Bank of the Rhine many thanks for the fair coat of honour which our glory might obtain from the invincible command of the faithful who has not yet salad 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 Rikamiye Rome, 21st March, 1829 Well, I am right and you are wrong I went yesterday between two ballads and while waiting for Pope to Saint Onofrio and it is two orange trees that grow in the cloister and not a never-green 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 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 Dominicino 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 is scarcely ever blue for him and the former often failed him no hope 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 the opposite to that which they seem to decide upon for the rest it seems to me at present that everyone wants to be at peace with me the cardinal de Clemontonere 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 he have read my second speech thank Monsieur Caratry 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 Custiglioni made me have I been finally enough praised in open conclave? you could not have done better in the days when you spoiled me 24th March 1829 if I were to believe the rumors of Rome we should have a pope tomorrow I am in a moment of discouragement and I refuse to believe in such happiness you can understand that that happiness is not political happiness the joy of a triumph but the happiness of being free and seeing you again when I speak to you so much about the conclave I am like the people who have a fixed idea and who believe that the whole world is interested in that idea and yet in Paris who thinks of the conclave who troubles about a pope or my tribulations the light-heartedness the interest of the moment the discussions in the chambers excited ambitions very different things to do when the duet de Laval used also to write to me of his cares about the conclave preoccupied with the Spanish wars I was I used to say when I received his dispatchers oh good heavens I have something else to think of and M. Potanis is applying the lex talionis to me today nevertheless one may fairly say that they are now religious ideas were not mixed up with political ideas as they have since been throughout Europe the quarrel did not lie there the nomination could not as it does now disturb or pacify states since a letter which informed me that M. de la Faronaise's leave had been extended and that he had left for Rome I have heard nothing still I believe that news true M. Thierry has written me a touching letter from here and still he wants a place in the Academy of Inscriptions and asked me to write for him I am going to do so my excavation continues to give me sarcophagusis death can only yield what it possesses the Fusar monument is getting on it will be noble in large you cannot imagine how the picture of the Arcadian shepherds was made for a barrel-leave nor how well it suits culture 28th March M. Riccardo de Clermontonere who has been staying with me enters the conclave today this is an age of marvels I have with me the son of Marshal Lan and the grandson of the Chancellor M. de Constitucionel dying at my table beside M. de la Cotidienne that is the advantage of being sincere let everyone think what he pleases provided I am allowed the same liberty I only endeavour that my opinion shall have the majority because I think it, and rightly I attribute to this sincerity the tendency of the most diverging opinions to gather round me I exercise the right of sanctuary towards them they cannot be seized beneath my roof to M. Le Duc de Blacas Rome 24th March 1829 I am sorry M. Le Duc that a phrase in my letter should have been able to cause you any anxiety I have no reason whatever to complain of a man of sense and intelligence who told me nothing saved diplomatic common places do we ambassadors ever talk anything else as to the cardinal of whom you do me the honour to speak the French government has not designated anyone in particular it has left the matter entirely as I reported it our eight moderate and peaceful cardinals who seem to attract the wishes of all the courts alike are the candidates among whom we wish to see the votes fall but we lay no claim to impose a choice upon the majority of the conclave we do with all our might and by every means repel two or three fanatical intriguing or incapable cardinals whom the minority are supporting I have no other possible means of sending you this letter M. Le Duc I am therefore very simply posting it because it contains nothing that you and I cannot confess aloud I have the honour to be etc to M. Le Camier Rome 31st March 1829 M. de Montebello has arrived and has brought me your letter with a letter from M. Bertin and from M. Villemain my excavations are doing well I find plenty of empty sarcophaguses I shall be able to choose one for myself without my ashes being obliged to turn out those of the old dead men whom the wind has carried away depopulated sepulchres afford the spectacle of a resurrection and yet they await only a more profound death it is not life but annihilation which has made those tombs deserted to finish my little diary of the moment I will tell you that the day before yesterday I climbed to the ball of St. Peter's during a storm you cannot imagine the noise of the wind in mid-sky around the cupola of Michelangelo and above that temple of the Christians which crushes ancient Rome 31st March evening Victory I have one of the folks whom I had placed on my list it is Castiglioni the very cardinal whom I was supporting for the papacy in 1823 when I was minister he who lately replied to me in the conclave with many praises Castiglioni is a moderate man and devoted to France it is a complete triumph the conclave, before separating gave orders to write to the Nuncio in Paris to tell him to express to the king the satisfaction of the sacred college with my conduct I have already dispatched the news to Paris by the telegraph the prefect of the Rhône is the intermediary of this aerial correspondence and this prefect is Monsieur de Bross son of that concert de Bross the frivolous traveller to Rome whom I have often quoted in the notes which I collect while writing to you the courier who carries this letter to you carries my dispatch to Monsieur Portalis I never have two consecutive days of good health now this makes me furious I have no heart for anything in the midst of my sufferings still, I am awaiting with some impatience to hear the effect in Paris of the nomination of my pope what they will say, what they will do what will become of me the most certain thing is that my leave has been applied for I have seen in the papers the great quarrel raised by the constitutionnel about my speech it accuses the messager of not printing it and we in Rome have messages of the 22nd of March the quarrel belongs to the 24th or 25th containing the speech isn't it singular it seems clear that there are two editions one for Rome and the other for Paris poor people, I am thinking of the mistake made by another paper it assures its readers that the conclave was very much dissatisfied with this speech what can it have said when it read the praises given me by Cardinal Castiglioni who has become pope when shall I have done talking to you of all these trifles when shall I busy myself only with finishing the memoirs of my life and my life also as the last page of those memoirs I have great need of it I am very weary the weight of my days increases and makes itself felt on my head I amuse myself by calling it rheumatism but it is the kind that one cannot cure one word only sustains me when I again say soon 3rd April I forgot to tell you that as Cardinal Fresh behaved very well in the conclave and voted with our Cardinals I took a resolution and invited him to dinner he refused in a very tactful note dispatched to Missila Conte Portanis Rome 2nd April 1829 Missila Conte Cardinal Albani has been appointed Secretary of State as I had the honour to inform you in my first letter carried to Lyon by the mounted messenger dispatched on the evening of the 31st of March the new minister is not pleasing to the Sardinian faction nor to the majority of the sacred college nor even to Austria because he is violent and anti-Jesuit, rude in his manner and an Italian above everything rich and excessively aberritious Cardinal Albani is mixed up in all sorts of enterprises and speculations I went yesterday to play him my first visit the moment he saw me he exclaimed I am a pig he was in fact exceedingly dirty you shall see that I am not an enemy I am giving you his own words Missila Conte I replied that I was very far from regarding him as an enemy you people he resumed want water not fire don't I know your country haven't I lived in France he speaks French like a Frenchman you will be satisfied and your master too how is the king good morning let us go to St. Peter's it was eight o'clock in the morning I had already seen his holiness and all Rome was hastening to the ceremony of the adoration Cardinal Albani is a man of intelligence false by nature and frank by temperament his violence foils his cunning one can make use of him by flattering his pride and satisfying his avarice Pius VIII is very learned especially in matters of theology he speaks French but with less facility and grace than Leo XII he is attacked on the right side with partial paralysis and is subject to convulsive movements the supreme power will cure him he is to be crowned on Sunday next Passion Sunday, the fifth of April now Missila Conte that the principal business which kept me in Rome is ended I shall be infinitely obliged to you if you will obtain from me from his majestist kindness leave of a few months I shall not take it until after I have handed the pope the letter in which the king will reply to that which Pius VIII has written always going to write to him to announce his elevation to the chair of St. Peter permit me to beg once more on behalf of my two secretaries of legation Monsieur Bellocque and Monsieur de Giveret the favours which I have asked of you for them the intrigues of Cardinal Albani in the conclave the partisans whom he had won even among the majority had made me fear some unexpected stroke to carry him to the sovereign pontificate it seemed to me impossible to allow ourselves to be thus surprised and to permit the Austrian chargé d'affaires to put on the tiara under the eyes of the French ambassador I therefore availed myself of the arrival of Monsieur le Cardinal de Clermontonnet to charge him against all eventualities with the letter enclosed the terms of which I framed on my own responsibility fortunately he was not called upon to make use of this letter he handed it back to me and I have the honour to send it to you I have the honour to be etc and of book 13 part 1 book 13 part 2 of the memos of Chateaubriand volume 5 this is Librevox recording all Librevox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Librevox.org Recording Manicolny the memos of Chateaubriand volume 5 by François René de Chateaubriand translated by Alexander Texair de Matos book 13 part 2 to his eminence Monsignor Le Cardinal de Clermontonnet Rome 28th March 1829 Monsignor unable to communicate with your colleagues Messieurs the French Cardinals confined in the Monte Cavallo Palace obliged to provide for everything to the advantage of his Majesty's service and in the interests of our country knowing how often unexpected nominations have been made in the conclaves I find myself to my regret in the disagreeable necessity of confiding to your eminence a power of eventual exclusion although Messieurs Le Cardinal Albani appears to have no chance he is nonetheless a man of capacity on whom in case of a prolonged struggle they might turn their eyes but he is the Cardinal charged at the conclave with the instructions of Austria Messieurs Le Cardinal Lutzau has already designated him in that quality in his speech now it is impossible to allow the elevation to the sovereign pontificate of the Cardinal openly belonging to a crown whether it be the crown of France or any other consequently Monsignor I charge you by virtue of my full powers as his most Christian Majesty's ambassador and taking all the responsibility upon myself alone to give the exclusion to Messieurs Le Cardinal Albani if on the one hand by a fortuitous juncture or on the other by a secret combination he should come to obtain the majority of the suffragists I am etc etc this letter of exclusion entrusted to a Cardinal by an ambassador who is not formally authorised to that effect is a piece of diplomatic temerity it is enough to send a shudder through all stay at home statesmen all the heads of departments all the chief clerks all the copiers at the foreign office but as the minister knew so little about his business as not even to think of an eventual case of exclusion needs must that I should think of it for him suppose that Albani had been made pope by accident what would have become of me I should have been ruined forever as a politician I say this not for myself who care little for politician's fame but for the future generation of writers who would be browbeaten because of my accident and who would expiate my misfortune at the cost of their career even as the whipping-boy is punished when Monsieur le Dauphin commits a blunder but neither should my daring foresight in taking the letter of exclusion upon myself be too much admired that which appears enormous when measured by the stunted scale of the old diplomatic ideas is really nothing at all in the actual order of society I owed my audacity on the one hand to my insensibility to all disgrace on the other to my knowledge of contemporary opinion the world as it is today does not care too soos for the nomination of a pope the rivalries of crowns or the internal intrigues of a conclave dispatch to Monsieur Le Conte Portalis confidential Rome 2nd April 1829 Monsieur Le Conte I have the honor today to send you the important documents which I promised you these are nothing less than the secret and the official journal of the conclave it is translated word for word from the Italian original I have only removed any part of it which might point too precisely to the sources whence I drew it if the smallest atom of these perhaps unexampled revelations were to transpire it would cost the fortune, the liberty and perhaps the lives of several persons this would be the more deplorable in as much as we owe these revelations not to interest and corruption but to confidence and French honor this document Monsieur Le Conte must therefore remain forever secret after it has been read in the King's Council for in spite of the precautions which I've taken to keep name silent and to suppress direct references it still says enough to compromise its authors I have added a commentary to facilitate its perusal the Pontifical Government is in the habit of keeping a register on which its decisions, its acts and deeds are noted down day by day and so to speak hour by hour what an historical treasure if one could delve into it going back towards the earlier centuries of the papacy I have been given a momentary glimpse of it for the present period the King will see through the documents which I am sending you what has never been seen before the inside of a conclave the most intimate sentiments of the Court of Rome will be known to him in the dark the commentary which I've made of the journal dispensing me from any other reflection it but remains for me to offer you the renewed assurance of the high regard with which I have the honor to be etc etc the Italian original of the precious document announced in this confidential dispatch was burnt in Rome before my eyes I have kept no copy of the translation of this document which I sent to the Foreign Office I have only a copy of the commentary of the remarks which I added to that translation but the same discretion which made me charge the minister to keep the document fervor secret obliges me here to suppress my own remarks for however great the obscurity in which those remarks are enveloped in the absence of the document to which they refer that obscurity would still be daylight in Rome now resentment is long in the eternal city it might happen that 50 years hence it should fall upon some grand nephew of the authors of the mysterious confidence I shall therefore content myself with giving a general epitome of the contents of the commentary while laying stress on a few passages which bear a direct relation to the affairs of France we see first how greatly the court of Naples was deceiving Monsieur de Blacas or else how much it was itself deceived for while it was causing me to be told that the Neapolitan cardinals would vote with us they were joining the minority or the so-called Sardinian faction the minority of the cardinals imagined that the vote of the French cardinals would influence the form of our government, how so apparently by means of secret orders with which they were supposed to be charged and by their votes in favour of a hot-headed pope the Nuncio Lombreschini declared to the conclave that the cardinal de Latille had the king's secret all the efforts of the faction tended to create their belief that Charles X and his government were not in agreement on the thirteenth of March the cardinal de Latille announced that he had a declaration purely of conscience to make to the conclave he was sent before four cardinal bishops the acts of that secret confession remained in the keeping of the grand penitentiary the other French cardinals knew nothing of the subject matter of this confession and cardinal Albani sought in vain to find out what is important and curious the minority consisted of sixteen compact votes the cardinals forming this minority called themselves the fathers of the cross they placed a St. Andrew's cross on their doors as a sign that having decided on their choice they did not want to communicate with anyone the majority of the conclave displayed reasonable sentiments and a firm resolution in no way to mix in foreign politics the minutes drawn up by the proto-notary of the conclave are worthy of remark they conclude with these words Pius VIII determined to appoint cardinal Albani secretary of state in order also to satisfy the cabinet of Vienna the sovereign pontiff divides the lots between the two crowns he declares himself the French Pope and gives the secretarieship of state to Austria to Madame Rikamie, Rome Wednesday 8th April 1829 this day I've had the whole conclave to dinner tomorrow I receive the Grand Duchess Helen on Easter Tuesday I give a ball for the closing of the session and then I shall prepare to come to see you you can judge of my anxiety at the moment of writing to you I have no news yet of my mounted courier announcing the death of the Pope and yet the Pope is already crowned Leo XII is forgotten I have begun again to transact affairs with the new secretary of state Albani nothing is going on as though nothing had happened and I do not even know whether you in Paris know that there is a new pontiff how beautiful that ceremony of the papal benediction is the Sabine Range on the horizon then the deserted Roman Campania then Rome itself then the Piazza San Pietro and the whole people falling on its knees under an old man's hand the Pope is the only prince who blesses his subjects I had written so far when a courier arrived from Genoa bringing me a telegraphic dispatch from Paris to Toulon which dispatch? Replying to the one I had sent informs me that on the 4th of April at 11 o'clock in the evening they received in Paris my telegraphic dispatch from Rome to Toulon announcing the election of Cardinal Custiglioni and that the king is greatly pleased the rapidity of these communications is prodigious my courier left at 8 o'clock in the evening on the 31st of March and at 8 o'clock in the evening on the 8th of April I received a reply from Paris 11th April 1829 Today is the 11th of April in 8 days we shall have Easter with us in 15 days my leave and then to see you everything disappears before that hope I am no more sad I no longer think of ministers or politics tomorrow we begin Holy Week I shall think of all you have told me Why are you not here to hear the beautiful songs of sorrow with me we should go to walk in the deserts of the Roman Campania now covered with flowers and verger all the ruins seem to become young within New Year I am off their number Wednesday in Holy Week 15th April I have just left the Sistine Chapel where I attended Tenebrae and heard the Misere song I remember that you had talked to me of this ceremony which touched me a hundred times as much because of that the daylight was failing the shadows crept slowly across the frescoes of the chapel and one distinguished but a few bold strokes of Michelangelo's brush the candles extinguished by one in turns sent forth from the stifled flames as slender white smoke a very natural image of life which scripture compares to a little smoke the cardinals were kneeling the Pope prostrate before the same altar where a few days before I had seen his predecessor the admirable prayer of penance and mercy which succeeded the lamentations of the Prophet rose at intervals in the silence of the night one felt overwhelmed by the great mystery of a God dying that the sins of mankind might be wiped out the Catholic heiress was there on her seven hills with all her memories but instead of the powerful pontiffs those cardinals who contended for Preston's with monarchs the Pope without family or support princes of the church without splendor announced the end of a power which has civilized the modern world the masterpieces of the arts were disappearing with it were fading away on the walls and ceilings of the Vatican that half abandoned palace inquisitive strangers separated from the unity of the church assisted at the ceremony on their way and took the place of the community of the faithful what was seized with a twofold sadness Christian Rome while commemorating the agony of Jesus Christ seemed to be celebrating her own to be repeating for the New Jerusalem the words which Jeremiah's addressed to the old dispatched to Missila Conte Portalis Rome 16th April 1829 Missila Conte things are developing here as I had the honor to foreshadow to you the words and actions of the new Pope are in complete agreement with the pacificatory system followed by Leo XII Pasiath goes even further than his predecessor he expresses himself with greater frankness on the charter of which he is not afraid to pronounce the word nor to advise the French to follow the spirit the Nuncio having again written about our business has received a dry intimation to mind his own all is being concluded for the Concordat with the Netherlands and Missila Conte de Sel his mission next month Cardinal Albani finding himself in a difficult position is obliged to pay for it the protestations which he makes to me of his devotion to France annoy the Austrian ambassador who is unable to conceal his ill humor from the religious point of view we have nothing to fear from Cardinal Albani himself troubled with very little religion he will not feel the impulse to trouble us either with his own fanatism or with the moderate feelings of his sovereign as for the political point of view Italy is not at this day to be juggled away through police intrigues and a cipher correspondence to allow the legations to be occupied or to place an Austrian garrison at Ancona on some pretext rather would mean stirring up Europe and declaring war against France now we are no longer in 1814 1815 1816 and 1817 a greedy and unjust ambition not to be satisfied before our eyes with impunity and so that Cardinal Albani is in receipt of a pension from Prince Metinich that he is a kinsman of the Duke of Modena to whom he declares himself to be leaving his enormous fortune that he is hatching a little plot with that prince against the heir to the crown of Sardinia all that is true all that would have been dangerous at the time in secret and absolute governments set soldiers dimly in movement and dispatch but in these days with public governments with liberty of the press and of free speech with a telegraph in general rapidity of communication with knowledge of affairs spread through the several classes of society we are protected against the conjuring tricks and artifices of the old diplomacy at the same time it cannot be denied that they are drawbacks attached to an Austrian charge d'affaires in the position of secretary of state in Rome there are even certain notes those for instance relating to the imperial power in Italy which it would not be possible to place in Cardinal Albani's hands no one has yet been able to fathom the secret of an appointment which everybody dislikes including even the cabinet of Vienna has this to do with interest foreign to politics they say that Cardinal Albani is at this moment offering to make the Holy Father an advance of 200,000 piastres of which the Roman government demands a need others pretend that this sum will be lent by an Austrian banker Cardinal Machi told me on Saturday last that his Holiness not wishing to reappoint Cardinal Bernetti and desirous nevertheless of giving him a big place found no other means of arranging things and to make vacant the Bologna allegation wretched little difficulties often become the motives of the most important resolutions if Cardinal Machi's version is the true one I would like this doing in saying for the satisfaction of the crowns of France and Austria would be only an apparent reason by the aid of which he would seek to mask his own weakness in his own eyes for the rest no one believes that Albanian ministry will last so soon as he begins to enter into relations with the ambassadors difficulties will spring up on every hand as to the position of Italy Monsieur Laconte you must read with caution what will be written to you from Rome or elsewhere it is unhappily but too true that the government of the two Sicilies has fallen into the last stage of contempt the man in which the court lives in the midst of its guards fervor trembling fervor pursued by the phantoms of fear presenting the sole spectacle of ruinous hunting parties and gibbets contributes more and more to debase royalty in this country yet they take for conspiracies what is only the general uneasiness the product of the century the struggle of the old society with the new the contest between the decrepitude of the old institutions and the energy of the young generations in fine the comparison which everybody makes of that which is with that which might be let us not blind our eyes to this fact the great spectacle of a powerful free and happy France that great spectacle which strikes the eyes of the nations which have remained or relapsed under the yoke excites regrets or feeds hopes the medley of representative governments and absolute governments cannot long continue one or the other must go under and politics must return to an even level as in the time of Gothic Europe the custom house on a frontier can henceforth not separate liberty from slavery a man can no longer be hung on this side of a brook for principles repeated sacred on the other side of that brook it is in this sense, Monsieur Laconte and in this sense alone that there is any conspiracy in Italy it is in this sense too that Italy is French on the day when she shall enter on the enjoyment of the rights which her intelligence perceives and which the progressive march of time is carrying to her on that day she will be peaceful and purely Italian it is not a few poor devils of carbonari stirred up by the manoeuvres of the police and mercilessly hanged that will rouse the country to revolt governments are given the falsest ideas of the states of things they are prevented from doing what they ought to do to ensure their safety by always having pointed out to them as the private conspiracies of a handful of Jacobins what is really the effect of a permanent and general cause this Monsieur Laconte is the real position of Italy each of her states in addition to the common working of men's minds is tortured with some local malady Piedmont is delivered to a fanatical faction the Milanese is being devoured by the Austrians the domains of the Holy Father are being ruined by bad financial administration the taxes amount to nearly 50 millions and do not leave the landlord 1% of his income the customs bring in hardly anything smuggling is general the Prince of Modena has established shops in his duchy a place of immunity for all ancient abusers for the sale of prohibited merchandise which he passes at night into the Bologna allegation the Monsieur Laconte's spoken to you of Naples where the weakness of the government is saved only by the cowardice of the population it is this absence of military valour that will prolong the death agony of Italy Bonaparte did not have time to revive that valour in the land of Marius and Caesar the habits of an idle life and the charm of the climate contributes still more to deprive the southern Italians of the desire to agitate for an improved condition antipathies arising from the territorial divisions add to the difficulties of an inside movement but if some impulse came from without if some prince beyond the Alps granted a charter to his subjects a revolution would take place because all is ripe for such a revolution happier than be and instructed by our experience the people would be sparing in the crimes and miseries with which we will avish I have no doubt Monsieur Laconte that I shall soon receive the leave for which I asked you at the moment therefore of leaving Italy I have thought in my duty to place a few general hints before you in order to fix the ideas of the king's council and to warn it against reports inspired by narrow minds or blind passions I have the honour to be etc etc Dispatch to Monsieur Laconte Portanis Rome 16th April 1829 Monsieur Laconte Messieurs, the French Cardinals are very eager to know what some have allowed them for their expenses and their stay in Rome They have repeatedly asked me to write to you on the subject I shall therefore be infinitely obliged to you if you will inform me as soon as possible of the king's decision As regards myself, Monsieur Laconte when you were good enough to allow me an additional sum of 30,000 francs you were under the impression that none of the Cardinals would stay with me Now, Monsieur de Clermontonnere put up here with his suite his yastical secretary, a lay secretary a valet two men servants and a French cook besides a Roman groom of the chambers a master of ceremonies three footmen, a coachman and all the Italian establishment which a Cardinal is obliged to keep up here The Archbishop of Toulouse who is not able to walk does not dine at my table He requires two or three courses at different hours for his guests and friends My Reverend Visitor will certainly not pay his expenditure here He will go and leave the bills to me I shall have to pay not only the cook the launderers, the livery's tablekeeper et cetera et cetera but also the two surgeons who came to look at his lordship's leg the shoemaker who makes his white and purple slippers and the tailor who has confection the cloaks, cassocks, neckbands the whole outfit of the Cardinal and his abbeys I shall look on to you I had my extraordinary expenses for costs of representation which expenses have been increased by the presence of the Grand Duchess Helen Prince Paul of Württemberg and the King of Bavaria You will no doubt find that the 30,000 francs which you allowed me will have been much exceeded The first year of an ambassador's establishment is a ruinous one The grants allowed for that establishment being far below its needs It requires a residence of almost three years for a diplomatic agent to justify means to pay off the debts which he has begun by making and to keep his expenses on a level with his receipts I know all the penury of the budget of the Foreign Office If I had any fortune of my own I would not trouble you Nothing is more disagreeable to me, I assure you than these details of money into which a rigorous necessity compels me to enter much against my will except Monsieur Lacanthe et cetera I had given bowls and evening parties in London and Paris and although a child of a different desert I had not passed too badly through those new solitudes but I had no glimmer of the nature of the entertainment in Rome They have something of ancient poetry which places death by the side of pleasures At the Villa Medici where I received the Grand Duchess Helen the grants themselves are an adornment and the frame of the picture is magnificent On one side the Villa Borghese with Raphael's house On the other the Villa Monte Maria and the slopes edging the Tiber Below this spectator the whole of Rome like an old abandoned eagle's nest Amid the groves thronged together with the descendants of the Paulus and Coronas beauties come from Naples, Florence and Milan The Princess Helen seem to be their queen Borrea suddenly descending from the mountain tore the banqueting tent and fled with shreds of canvas and garlands I give us an image of all that time has swept away on this shore The embassy staff were in consternation I felt an indescribable ironical gaiety at seeing a breath from heaven carry off my gold of a day and my joys of an hour The mischief was promptly repaired Instead of lunching on the terrace we lunched in the graceful palace The harmony of the horns and oboes spread by the wind had something of the murmur of my American forests The groves disporting Amid the squalls The women whose tortured veils beat their hair and faces The saltarello which continued during the storm The improvisa tricea the balloon escaping crooked-wise with the scythe of the door of the north All this gave a new character to those sports in which the customary tempest of my life seemed to take part What a fascination for any man who should not have counted his heap of years and who should have asked illusions of the world in the storm It is difficult indeed for me to remember my autumn wind at my receptions I see past before me those women of springtime who penetrate among the flowers the concerts and the lights of my successive galleries as we should say swans swimming towards radiant climes To what days on me are they going? Some seek what they already love others what they do not yet love At the end of the road this supple-curse always open here into those ancient sarcophaguses which serve as basins to fountains hanging from porticoes They will go to swell so many light and charming ashes Those waves of beauties, diamonds flowers and feathers roll to the sound of Rossini's music which is re-echoed and grows feebler from orchestra to orchestra Is that melody the sigh of the breeze to which I listened in the savannas of the floridas, the moan which I heard in the temple of Eurektheus at Athens Is it the distant wailing of the north winds which rocked me on the ocean Could myself be hidden beneath the form of some of these brilliant Italian women? No My hammer-dried has remained united to the will of the meadows where I used to talk with her on the further side of the hedge at Comborg I have little in common with these follics of the society which has attached itself to my steps at the end of my race And yet this fairy scene contains a certain intoxication that flies to my head I get rid of it only by going to cool my brow in the solitary square of St. Peter's or in the deserted Colosseum Then the puny sights of the earth are lost and I find nothing equal to the sudden change of scene but the old melancholy of my early days I will now set forth here my relations as ambassador with the Bonaparte family in order to clear the restoration of one of the Calamnes that I have recently been thrown at its head France did not act alone in banishing the members of the imperial family She merely obeyed the hard necessity put upon her by the force of arms It was the allies who provoked that banishment Diplomatic conventions, formal treaties pronounced the exile of the Bonaparte lay down the very places they are to live at forbid a minister or ambassador to deliver a passport by himself to Napoleon's kinsmen the visa of the four other ministers or ambassadors of the four other contracting powers is exacted to such a degree did the blood of Napoleon frighten the allies even when it did not flow in his own veins Thank God I never submitted to those measures In 1823 without consulting anybody in spite of the treaties and on my own responsibility as minister of foreign affairs I delivered a passport to Madame Lacontes de Sous Villiers then in Brussels to enable her to come to Paris to offer her kinsmen who was ill Twenty times over I called for the appeal of those laws of persecution Twenty times over I told Louis the 18th that I should like to see the Duda Reich start captain of his guards and the stature of Napoleon put back on the top of the column in the plus one don Both as minister and ambassador I rendered all the services in my power to the Bonaparte family That was the broad view I took of the legitimate monarchy Liberty can look glory in the face As ambassador to Rome I authorised my secretaries in Atache to appear in the palace of Madame La Duchesse de Saint-Ire I threw down the barrier raised between Frenchmen who had all known adversity I rode to Missoula Cardinal Fisch to invite him to join the Cardinals who were to meet at my house I expressed to him my sorrow the political measures which it had been thought necessary to take I reminded him of the time when I had formed part of his mission to the Holy See and I begged my old ambassador to honour with his presence the banquet of his old secretary of embassy I received the following reply full of dignity, discretion and prudence Palazzo Falconieri 4 April 1829 Cardinal Fisch greatly appreciates Missoula Chateaubriand's obliging invitation but his position on returning to Rome was such as to recommend him to forsake the world and lead a life quite apart from any society except that of his family The circumstances that followed proved to him that this course was indispensable to his tranquility and as the amenities of the moment are no safeguard against unpleasantness in the future he is obliged not to change his mode of life Cardinal Fisch begs Missoula Chateaubriand to be convinced that nothing can equal his gratitude and that it is with much regret that he will not wait upon his excellency as frequently as he would have desired his very humble et cetera Cardinal Fisch The phrase the amenities of the moment are no safeguard against unpleasantness in the future is an allusion to the threat uttered by Missoula Blackhouse who had given orders for Missoula Cardinal Fisch to be flung down his stairs if he presented himself at the French Embassy Missoula Blackhouse was too much inclined to forget that he had not always been so great a lord I who in order to be what I have to be in so far as I can in the present have acted differently with his eminence the Archbishop of Lyon the little misunderstandings that existed between him and me in Rome obliged me to adopt a tone of propriety the more respectful in as much as I in my turn belonged to the triumphant and he to the beaten party Prince de Rome on his side did me the honour to ask my intervention sending me a copy of a request which he was addressing to the Cardinal Secretary of State he says in his letter to me exile is terrible enough both in its principle and in its consequences for that generous France which witnessed his birth Prince de Rome's that France which possesses all his affections in which he has served for twenty years not to wish to aggravate his situation by permitting every government to abuse the delicacy of his position Prince Jerome de Montville confiding in the loyalty of the French Government and in the character of its noble representative does not hesitate to believe that justice will be done him he takes this opportunity etc Jerome in consequence of this request I addressed a confidential note to the Secretary of State Cardinal Bernetti it ends with these words the motives inferred by Prince Jerome de Montville appearing to the under sign to be founded on justice and reason he could not refuse the applicant the intervention of his good officers persuaded as he is that the French Government will always regret to see the severity of the political laws aggravated by measures likely to give umbrage the under sign would set a special value upon obtaining in this circumstance the powerful interest of A.G. the Cardinal's Secretary of State Chateaubriand at the same time I replied to Prince Jerome as follows Rome 9th May 1829 the French ambassador to the Holy See has received the copy of the note and the letter to Prince Jerome de Montville has done him the honour to send him he hastens to thank him for the confidence which he has been good enough to show him he will make it a duty to write to his Holiness Secretary of State in support of his heinous just claims the V.C. de Chateaubriand who has also been banished from his country would be only too happy to be able to soften the fate of the Frenchmen who still find themselves placed under the blow of a political law the exiled brother of Napoleon who had formally struck off the list of our lords by Napoleon himself is one of those freaks of fortune which must need to have the ruins of Rome for witnesses the V.C. de Chateaubriand has the honour etc. Dispatch to M.Portanis Rome 4th May 1829 I have had the honour to inform you in my letter of 30th April acknowledging the receipt of your dispatch number 25 that the Pope received me in private audience on the 29th of April at midday the Holiness appeared to me to be enjoying very good health he made me sit beside him and kept me nearly an hour and a quarter the Austrian Ambassador had had a public audience before me to hand over his new credentials on leaving the closet of his Holiness at the Vatican I called on the Secretary of State and frankly broaching the question with him said well, you see what our newspapers are making you out to be you are an Austrian, you hate France you want to do her some bad turns what am I to believe of all that he shrugged his shoulders and replied your newspapers make me laugh I cannot convince you by my words if you are not convinced already but put me to the test and you shall see if I do not love France if I do not do what you ask me in the name of your king I believe M.Laconte the cardinal Albanis sincere he is profoundly indifferent in religious matters he is not a priest he has even thought of giving up the purple and marrying the priests who tie him with the noise they make he is lazy, a glutton a great love of all kinds of pleasures the weariness which bishops' charges and pastoral letters produce in him makes him extremely unfavorable to the courts of the authors of those charges and pastoral letters that old man of eighty wants to die in peace and joyousness I have the honour etc I often visit Monte Cavalli there the solitude of the gardens is increased by the solitude of the Roman Campania in search of which one's eyes turn beyond Rome and up the right bank of the Tiber the gardeners are my friends their walks leading to the Panateria a poor dairy farm aviary or poultry yard the occupants of which are as indigent and peaceful as the latter-day hopes looking down from the height of the terraces of the coronal enclosure one sees a narrow street in which women sit working at their windows on the different stories some embroider others paint in the silence of this retired quarter the cells of the cardinals of the last conclave do not interest me at all when St. Peter's was built when masterpieces were ordered of Raphael when at the same time the kings came to kiss the pontiff's slipper there was something worthy of attention in the temple papacy I would gladly see the cell of a Gregory VII of a Sixtus V just as I would look for the lion's den in Babylon but dark holes deserted by an obscure company of substitutionarians represent to me only those columbaria of ancient Rome which are empty today of their dust and from which a family of dead have fled I therefore pass rapidly by those cells already half demolished to walk through the rooms of the palace there everything speaks to me of an event for which one finds no precedent except by going back to Chiarra Colonna Nogaret and Boniface VIII my first and my last visit to Rome are connected by memories of Paris VII to her story I have referred when speaking of Madame de Beaumont and of Bonaparte my two visits are two pindentives outlined under the vault of my monument my faithfulness to the memory of my old friends must give confidence to the friends who remain to me for me nothing sinks into the tomb all that I have known lives around me according to the Indian doctrine death when it smites us does not destroy us it only makes us invisible to Massila Conte Fortanis Rome 7th May 1829 Massila Conte I have at last received by Messias de Gauche and Francveil your dispatch number 25 this rude dispatch made out by some ill-bred foreign office clerk is not what I had the right to expect after the services which I had had the honour to render the king during the conclave and above all they might have remembered a little whom they were addressing not an obliging word for Messia Belac who obtained such exceptional documents nothing in reply to the request I made on his behalf Gretus' comments on Cardinal Albani's nomination a nomination made in the conclave which no one therefore could have foreseen or prevented a nomination concerning which I have never ceased to send you explanations in my dispatch number 34 which has doubtless now reached you I again offer you a very simple method of getting rid of this cardinal if he causes France such alarm and that method will already be half-carried out when you receive this letter tomorrow I shall take leave of his holiness I shall hand over the embassy to Messia Belac as Chargé d'affaires in accordance with the instructions in your dispatch number 24 and leave for Paris I have the honour to be at Cetra this last note is a rude one and puts an abrupt close to my correspondence with Messia Portales to Madame Racamié 14th May 1829 my departures fix for the 16th Letters from Vienna arriving this morning announce that Messia de Laval has refused to foreign office is it true? if he keeps to this refusal what will happen? God knows I hope that all will be decided before my arrival in Paris it seems to me that we have become paralyzed and that we have nothing free except our tongues you think I shall come to an arrangement with Messia de Laval I doubt it I am inclined to come to an arrangement with nobody I was going to arrive in the most peaceful mood and those people think fit to pick a quarrel with me so long as I had a chance of office they could not praise and flatter me enough in their dispatches the day on which the place was taken or thought to be taken they dryly informed me of Messia de Laval's nomination in the rudest and at the same time the most stupid dispatch but before becoming so flat and insolent between one post and another they ought to have reflected a little whom they were addressing and Messia Portales will have learnt as much from a word which I have sent him lately in reply it is possible that he merely signed without reading just as Carnot signed hundreds of death warrants on trust the friend of the great l'hôpital the chancelier Olivier in his 16th century language which sapoliteness at defiance compares the French to monkeys which climber to the treetops and never cease climbing until they reach where they show what they ought to hide all that has happened in France from 1789 to our own time proves the correctness of the simile every man as he ascends through life becomes like the chancelier's ape he ends by shamelessly exposing his infirmities to the passers-by see at the end of my dispatches I am seized with a desire to boast the great men who swarm at this present time prove that a man is a dupe if he does not himself proclaim his immortality have you read in the archives of the Foreign Office the diplomatic correspondence relating to the most important events at the period of that correspondence nope, at least you have read the printed correspondence you know the negotiations with Dibele, of Dossin, of Dupont of the Président Jeannot the State Memoirs of Ville-roix the Economy Royale of Tully you have seen the memoirs of the Cardinal de Richelieu numbers of letters of Mazarin the papers and documents relating to Dibele's failure to the piece of monster you know Barian's dispatches on English affairs the negotiations on the Spanish succession are not unfamiliar to you the name of madame des Ilseurs has not escaped you M. de Schroesel's family compact has come under your notice you are not unacquainted with Jiménez, Olivier's and Pompale Hugo Grosius on the Liberty of the Seas his letters to the two Oxensteins the negotiations of the Grand Pensionary de Witt with Peter Grosius the second son of Hugo in fine the collection of diplomatic treaties has perhaps attracted your attention no so you have read none of those sempitonal usuberations well then read them when you have done so pass over my Spanish war the success of which troubles you although forms my chief claim to be classed as a statesman take my dispatches from Prussia, England and Rome place them beside the other dispatches which I have mentioned and then with your hand on your conscience tell me which have bored you most tell me if my work and the work of my predecessors are not quite similar if the grasp of small things and of practical matters is not as manifest on my part as on that of the past ministers and defunct ambassadors first of all you will notice that I have an eye for everything that I occupy myself with Rashid Pasha and M. de Blakas and I defend my privileges and rights as ambassador to Rome against all comers that I am crafty, false and eminent quality and cunning to such an extent that when M. de Funchal in an equivocal position writes to me I do not reply to him but go to see him with astute politeness so that he is unable to show a line in my handwriting and is nevertheless satisfied there is not an imprudent word to be criticised in my conversations with Cardinals and Al-Bani the two secretaries of state nothing escapes me I descend to the prettiest details I restore the accounts of the affairs of the French and Rome in such a way that they still exist on the basis on which I have placed them with an eagle's glance I perceive that the treaty of Trinitarre de Monte between the Holy See and the ambassador to Slavalin Blakas is irregular and that neither party had the right to conclude it mounting higher and coming to the greater diplomacy I take upon myself to give the exclusion to a Cardinal because a minister of foreign affairs has left me without instructions and exposes me to seeing a creature of Austria elected Pope I procure the secret journal of the conclave a thing that no ambassador has ever been able to obtain day by day I send the list of names and votes nor do I neglect Bonaparte's family I do not despair by means of good treatment of persuading Cardinal Fisch to send in his resignation of Lyon if a Carvanaro stirs I am informed of it unable to judge how much truth is in the conspiracy if an abbey intrigues I am aware of it and I baffle the plans that had been formed to separate the French Cardinals from the French ambassador lastly I discover that a great secret has been deposited by the Cardinal de Latille in the bosom of the Grand Penitentiary are you satisfied is that a man who knows his trade very well and now see I dispatch all this diplomatic business like the first ambassador that comes without its costing me an idea in the same way as a booby of a lower norm and peasant knits his stockings while watching his sheep my sheep were my dreams now here is another point of view if you compare my official litters with the official litters of my predecessors you will see that mine treat of general affairs as well as private affairs that I am drawn by the character of the ideas of my century into a loftier region of the human mind this may be observed more particularly in the dispatch in which I speak to Monsieur Portales of the State of Italy in which I set forth the mistake of the cabinets which take for private conspiracies that which is only the development of civilisation the memorandum on the war in the east also exposes truths of a political order which are out of the common I have talked with two popes of other things than cabinet intrigues I have obliged them to speak to me of religion, liberty, the future destiny of the world my speech delivered at the door of the conclave has the same character I dare to tell old men to go forward and place religion once again at the head of the march of society readers, wait for me to earn my boasting so as next to come to the object in the man of the philosopher Plato making a circuit round his idea I have become Ul Sidrac age prolongs my very road I continue, I shall be along while yet several writers of our time have a mania for disdaining their literary talent in order to follow their political talent which they value far above the former thank God I am governed by a contrary instinct I make little of politics for the very reason that I have been lucky at the game to succeed in public life it is not a question of acquiring qualities but a matter of losing them I shamelessly admit my aptitude for practical things without cherishing the smallest illusion touching the obstacle within myself which opposes my complete success that obstacle has nothing to do with amuse it arises from my indifference to everything with this defect it is impossible to achieve anything completely in practical life indifference I admit is one of the qualities of statesmen but a statesman without conscience they have to know how to look dry-eyed upon any event to swallow bitter pills like malsey and where others are concerned to set at naught morality, justice, sufferings provided that in the midst of revolutions they know how to find their own particular fortune for to those transcendent minds the accident be it good or bad is bound to bring something it must pay at the rate of a throne, a coffin, an oath, an outrage the tariff is made up by the miones of catastrophes and affronts I am not an expert in these numismatics unfortunately my indifference is a double one I grow no more excited about my person than about facts contempt for the world came to simple the hermit from his religious faith contempt for society comes to me from my political incredulity this incredulity would carry me high in a sphere of action if more careful of my foolish self I were able at the same time to humiliate it and to clothe it do what I may I remain a numbscull of a decent man naively stupid and quite bare unable either to cringe or to help myself Dondi, speaking of himself seems to have described one side of my character I have never had any ambition he says because I had too much being unable to endure the dependence which confines within such narrow limits the effects of the inclination which God gave me for great things glorious to the state incapable of procuring the happiness of peoples without it being possible for me to consider my private interest in all that I was fit only for a king who would have reigned by himself and who would have had no other desire than to render his glory immortal in that case I was not fit for the kings of the day now that I have led you by the hand through the most secret winding ways of my merits that I have made you feel all that is rare in my dispatchers like one of my colleagues at the institute who is incessantly singing his own fame and teaching men to admire him now I will tell you what I am leading up to with my boasting by showing what they are able to do in public life I wish to defend the men of litters against the men of diplomacy the counting house and the officers the latter must not be allowed to take it into their heads to think themselves above men the smallest of whom over-tops them by a head when one knows so many things like these practical gentlemen one should at least not display gross ignorance you talk of facts, well then recognize facts the majority of the great writers of antiquity, of the middle ages or modern England have been great statesmen when they have deigned to descend to public life I did not wish to give them to understand César Fieri refusing an embassy that their diplomacy and their dispatchers seemed to me and certainly were for me less important than my tragedies or even those of others but it is impossible to reclaim that kind of people they cannot and must not be converted who in France was ever more literary than Lafittale, the reversion of Horace than Dossard that capable ambassador than Richelieu, that great head who not content with dictating controversial treaties with writing memoirs and histories constantly invented dramatic subjects and rhymed with Maiveil and Bois-au-Bairre and gave birth by the sweat of his brow to the academy and the grand pastoral is it because he was a bad writer that he was a great minister but the question is not one of the possession of his talent it is one of the passion for paper and ink and Monsieur de l'empire never showed more ardour nor incurred great expense than did the cardinal to snatch the palm from Parnassus seeing that the staging of his tragic comedy of Miram cost him two hundred thousand crowns if in one who is both a political and a literary personage the mediocrity of a perk caused the superiority of the statesman one would have thence to conclude would result from the strength of the poet yet did the literary genius destroy the political genius of Solon and Elegis equal to Simonides of Pericles stealing from the muses the eloquence with which he subjugated the Athenians of Thucydides and Demosthenes who carried to so great a height the glory of the writer and the orator while devoting their days to war and the public places did it destroy the genius of Xenophon who effected the retreat of the ten thousand while dreaming of the syrupedia of the two Scipios one the friend of Lelius the other associated in the fame of Terence of Cicero king of Letters as he was the father of the country of Caesar lastly author of works of grammar astronomy religion literature of Caesar rival of Archelechus in satire of Sophocles in tragedy of Demosthenes in eloquence whose commentaries are the despair of historians in spite of these examples and a thousand others literary talent which is very eminently the first of all because it excludes no other faculty will always in this country be an obstacle to political success of what use indeed is a high intelligence it served no purpose whatever the blockheads of France a special and holy national type grant nothing to the gracious as the Frederick's the bacon, the Thomas Moore's the Spencers of Falklands the Clarendon's the Bollingbrokes the Berks and the Cannings of France never will our vanity recognize in a man even a genius aptitude and the faculty of doing common things as well as they are done by a common mind if you overpass the vulgar conception by a herbert a thousand imbeciles exclaim you're losing yourself in the clouds delighted as they feel it underneath where they insist upon thinking those poor envious people by reason of their secret misery kick against merit they compassionately dismiss Virgil, Racine, Lamatine to their verses but proud sirs to what are we to dismiss you to oblivion which awaits you at twenty steps from your doors while twenty verses of those parts will carry them to the further most posterity the first invasion of Rome by the French under the directorate was infamous and accompanied by spoliation the second under the empire was iniquitous but once accomplished order reigned the republic demanded of Rome for an armistice twenty two millions the occupation of the citadel of Ancona one hundred pictures and statues and one hundred manuscripts to be selected by the French commissaries they especially wanted to have the bus of Brutus and Marcos Aurelius so many people in France call themselves Brutus in those days it was very simple that they should wish to possess the pious image of the putative father but Marcos Aurelius whose father was he Attila to go away from Rome asked only a certain number of pounds of pepper and silk in our day she for a moment redeemed her liberty with pictures great artists often neglected and unhappy left their masterpieces to serve as a ransom for the ungrateful cities that slighted them the Frenchmen of the empire had to repair the ravages which the Frenchmen of the republic had committed in Rome they also owed an expiation for the sack of Rome accomplished by an army led by a French prince it was befitting that Bonaparte should set order in the ruins which another Bonaparte had seen grow and whose overthrow he described the plan adopted by the French the plan adopted by the French administration for the excavation of the forum was that which Raphael proposed to Leo X it caused to rise from the earth the three columns of the temple of Jupiter, Tonant it laid bare the portico of the temple of Concord it exposed the pavement of the Via Sacre it did away with the new buildings with which the temple of peace was encumbered it removed the soil which covered the steps of the Colosseum cleared the interior of the arena and brought to view seven or eight rooms in the baths of Titus elsewhere the forum of Trajan was explored the Panthin, the Baths of Diocletion the temple of patrician modesty repaired funds were put aside for the maintenance outside Rome of the walls of Valeri and the tomb of Sicilia Metella repairing works were also undertaken for the purposes St Paul's without the walls which no longer exists had its roofing repaired St Agnes, San Martino, I. Monti were protected against the weather a portion of the roof and the pavement of St. Peter's was mended lightning conductors shielded the dome of Michelangelo from the lightning the site was marked out of two cemeteries in the east and west of the city and that on the east the Quirinal arrayed its external poverty in the luxury of porphyry and Roman marbles designed as it was for the imperial palace Bonaparte before taking up his residence there wanted to remove all traces of the abduction of the pontiff held captive at Fontainebleau it was proposed to pull down the part of the city lying between the capital and Monte Cavalli so that the triumphor might ride up the caesarean abode through an immense avenue events caused these gigantic dreams to fade away by destroying enormous realities among the plans decided was that of building a series of keys from Repeta to Riva Grande the foundations of those keys would have been laid the four blocks of houses between the castle of Sant Angelo and the piazza Rusticucci were partly bought up and would have been demolished a wide thoroughfare would thus have been opened onto the square of St. Peter's which would have been seen from the foot of the castle of Sant Angelo the French make walks wherever they go at Cairo I have seen a great square which they had planted with palm trees and surrounded with cafes bearing names borrowed from the cafes of Paris in Rome my fellow countrymen created the Pinchio you reach it by a flight of stairs going down this flight the other day I saw a carriage pass in which was seated a woman still possessed of a certain youth with her fair hair and the badly outlined contour of her figure the inelegance of her beauty I took her for fat white stranger from Westphalia it was Madame Guccioli nothing could go less well with the memory of Lord Byron what matter? the daughter of Ravenna of whom for the rest the poet was tired when he resolved to die will nonetheless go conducted by the muse to a place in the Elysian fields adding one more to the divinities of the tomb the western portion of the Piazza da Popolo was kept implanted in the space occupied by workyards and shops from the end of the open place one would have seen the capitol the Vatican and St. Peter's beyond the keys of the Tiber in other words ancient and modern Rome lastly a wood created by the French rises today to the east of the Colosseum one never meets anybody there although it has shot up it has the look of a brushwood growing at the foot of a tall ruin plenty the younger wrote to Maximus consider that you are sent to Greece where politeness, learning and even agriculture itself are supposed to have taken their first rise revere the gods, their founders their ancient glory and even that very antiquity itself which venerable in men is sacred in states honour them therefore for their deeds of old renown, nay and legendary traditions grant to everyone his full dignities privileges yes and the indulgence of his very vanity remember it was from this nation we derived our laws that she did not receive ours by conquest but gave us hers by favour remember it is Athens to which you go it is like a daemon you govern and to deprive such a people of the declining shadow the remaining name of liberty would be cruel, inhuman barbarous when Pliny wrote those noble touching words to Maximus did he know that he was drawing up instructions for peoples then barbarian that would one day come to whole sway over the ruins of Rome End of book 13 part 2