“Surely, Holy Father—but, generally speaking, the absolution precedes the penance”—a specious argument, this, of the diplomatist, seeing that the fruit of the absolution is dependent upon the performance of the penance.
All preliminaries being exhausted, it only remained for Lebzeltern to disclose the absolutely last possible basis of an understanding between the Pope and the Emperor.
“If the Emperor were willing to forego any formal act of abdication of the Temporal Power on the part of your Holiness,” he ventured, “might he count in return upon your absolute silence as to the past?”—By which Lebzeltern meant that the Pope should by his silence give a tacit sanction to all the things that Napoleon had done to the Church and her ministers—his imprisonment of the Pope and many of the Cardinals, his sequestration of countless Church moneys, his closing of the multitudes of religious houses, and his throwing of their occupants, destitute and homeless, upon the world.
“Out of the question,” said the Pope. “I could never feel sure of any pact with Napoleon.” Presently, however, he added: “The guarantee, though, of a third party to any treaty I might make with him would certainly ease my mind considerably—especially if Austria would furnish the guarantee.” And then, in an access of reconciliation, he continued: “I have already told you what I would be disposed to do on my side towards healing the breach between Napoleon and the Church. What more does he want of me? Does he wish me to recognise him as Emperor of the West? Very well, I am willing to do so. Does he wish me to crown him as such at Rome? Very well, again I am quite ready to do so. For that would not in any way be contrary to my conscience, provided only that he makes his peace with the Church and ceases from persecuting her; but I insist upon it that he shall respect her earthly Head in that Head’s unchangeable capacity as the spiritual chief of Christendom!”
Lebzeltern was, indeed, astounded at the Pope’s generosity.
“Most Holy Father,” he stammered, “you have given too much not to give just one little thing more—merely to allow your subjects to obey the present Government in the Papal States, and to order them expressly to do so.”
There followed a gesture of such pain on the part of the Sovereign Pontiff, expressing so eloquently his repugnance to this proposal, that Lebzeltern was penetrated with a shaft of regret for having made it. Moreover, as he says himself, “I trembled at the thought of all I had obtained from him!”
At the same time, Lebzeltern felt convinced of the uselessness of the Pope’s concessions. He knew that Napoleon, unless he could obtain the one thing on which his heart was set—the actual sovereignty of the Papal States, and that with the Pope’s consent and blessing,—would not for a moment consider anything else that might be offered him instead.
So Lebzeltern parted from the Holy Father for that day, his heart full of indefinable misgivings for the dark future in which the power of Napoleon loomed so vast and menacing, and in which there was no great light visible to him of the Church, save only here and there, so to speak, where the feeble red glow of a few distant, wide-scattered sanctuary-lamps starred the mirk of the new Europe.
On May 20, Lebzeltern went for the last time to the Vescovado, to take leave of the august prisoner within its walls.