"Rome, 12 January 1829.
"Monsieur le comte,
"I saw the Pope on the 2nd of this month; he was good enough to keep me with him in private audience for an hour and a half. I must report to you the conversation which I had with His Holiness.
"We first spoke of France. The Pope began with the most sincere praise of the King.
"'At no time,' he said, 'has the Royal Family of France displayed so complete a harmony of good qualities and virtues. Now calm has been restored among the clergy; the bishops have made their submission.'
"'That submission,' I replied, 'is, in part, due to the sagacity and moderation of Your Holiness.'
"'I advised what seemed reasonable to me to be done,' answered the Pope. 'There were no spiritual matters involved in the ordinances[704]; the bishops would have done better to leave their first letter unwritten; but, after saying, "Non possumus," it was difficult for them to withdraw. They tried to display as little contradiction as possible between their actions and their language at the moment of their adhesion: we must forgive them for it. They are pious men, firmly attached to the King and the Monarchy; they have their weaknesses in common with all men.'
"All this, monsieur le comte, was said in very clear and excellent French.
"After thanking the Holy Father for the confidence which he showed me, I spoke to him in terms of consideration of the Cardinal Secretary of State:
"'I chose him,' he said, 'because he has travelled, because he knows the general affairs of Europe and because he seemed to me to possess the sort of capacity which his post demands. He has written, with respect to your two ordinances, only what I thought and what I recommended him to write.'
"'Might I venture to give Your Holiness,' I resumed, 'my opinion of the religious situation in France?'
"'You will be doing me a great pleasure,' replied the Pope.
"I suppress a few compliments which His Holiness was good enough to address to me.
"'I think then, Most Holy Father, that the mischief arose in the first place from a mistake of the clergy: instead of supporting the new institutions, or at least keeping silence respecting those institutions, they allowed words of blame, to say no more, to escape in their charges and sermons. Irreligious persons, who were at a loss with what to reproach saintly ministers, seized upon those words and made a weapon of them; they cried that Catholicism was incompatible with the establishment of public liberty, that it was war to the death between the Charter and the priests. By holding the opposite conduct, our ecclesiastics would have obtained all they wanted from the nation. There is a great ground-work of religion in France and a visible inclination to forget our old misfortunes at the foot of the altars; but also there is a real attachment to the institutions introduced by the sons of St. Louis. It would be impossible to calculate the measure of power to which the clergy might have attained, if they had shown themselves at the same time friends to the King and the Charter. I have never ceased to preach this policy in my writings and in my speeches; but the passions of the moment refused me a hearing and took me for an enemy.'
"The Pope had listened to me with the greatest attention.
"'I enter into your ideas,' he said, after a moment's pause. 'Jesus Christ made no pronouncement as to the form of governments. "Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's[705]" means only, "Obey the established authorities." The Catholic religion has prospered in the midst of republics as in the bosom of monarchies; it has made immense progress in the United States; it reigns alone in Spanish America.'
"These words are very remarkable, monsieur le comte, at the very moment when the Court of Rome is strongly inclining to establish the bishops nominated by Bolivar[706].
"The Pope resumed:
"'You see how great is the influx of Protestant strangers to Rome: their presence does good to the country; but it is also good in another respect: the English come here with strange notions regarding the Pope and the Papacy, the fanaticism of the clergy, the slavery of the people in this country; they have not stayed here two months before they are quite changed. They see that I am only a bishop like any other bishop, that the Roman clergy are neither ignorant nor persecuting, and that my subjects are not beasts of burden!'
"Encouraged by this sort of effusion of the heart, and seeking to widen the scope of the conversation, I said to the Sovereign Pontiff:
"'Does not Your Holiness think that the moment is favourable for the recomposition of Catholic unity, for the reconciliation of the dissenting sects, by some slight concessions of discipline? The prejudices against the Court of Rome are vanishing in every quarter and, in a century which was still ardent, the work of reunion had already been attempted by Leibnitz[707] and Bossuet.'
"'This is a great matter,' said the Pope; 'but I must await the moment fixed by Providence. I agree that the prejudices are vanishing; the division of the sects in Germany has brought about the lassitude of those sects. In Saxony, where I resided for three years, I was the first to establish a foundling hospital and to obtain that this hospital should be served by Catholics. A general outcry arose against me at the time among the Protestants; to-day those same Protestants are the first to praise and endow the institution. The number of Catholics is increasing in Great Britain; it is true that they include many foreigners.'
"The Pope pausing for a moment, I took occasion to introduce the question of the Irish Catholics:
"'If the emancipation takes place,' I said, 'the Catholic religion will increase still more in Great Britain.'
Pope Leo XII. on Ireland.
"'That is true on one side,' replied His Holiness, 'but on the other there are disadvantages. The Irish Catholics are very ardent and very incautious. Has not O'Connell, in other respects a man of merit, gone so far as to say that a concordat had been proposed between the Holy See and the British Government? There is not a word of truth in this assertion; I cannot contradict it publicly; and it has given me great pain. And so, for the union of the dissenters, it is necessary that things should be ripe and that God Himself should complete His work. The popes can only wait.'
"This was not my opinion, monsieur le comte; but my business was to inform the King of the Holy Father's opinion on so serious a subject, not to combat it.
"'What will your newspapers say?' asked the Pope, with a sort of gaiety. 'They talk a great deal! Those of the Netherlands still more; but I am told that, in your country, nobody thinks of their articles an hour after they have read them.'
"'That is absolutely true, Most Holy Father: you see how the Gazette de France deals with me,'—for I know that His Holiness reads all our newspapers, not excepting the Courrier—'and still the Sovereign Pontiff treats me with extreme kindness; I have reason to believe, therefore, that the Gazette does not make a great impression on him.'—The Pope laughed and shook his head.—'Well, Most Holy Father, there are others like Your Holiness; when the paper tells the truth, the good it says remains; if it lies, it is as though it had said nothing at all. The Pope must expect some speeches during this session: the Extreme Right will maintain that M. le Cardinal Bernetti is not a priest and that his letters on the ordinances are not articles of faith; the Extreme Left will declare that we need not have taken our orders from Rome. The majority will commend the deference of the Privy Council and will loudly praise the spirit of peace and wisdom of Your Holiness.'
"This little explanation appeared to charm the Holy Father, who was pleased to meet with some one acquainted with the workings of our constitutional machine. Finally, monsieur le comte, thinking that the King and his Council would like to know the views of the Pope on the present state of affairs in the East, I repeated some news out of the papers, not being authorized to communicate to the Holy See the positive facts of which you informed me in your dispatch of the 18th December touching the recall of our expedition to the Morea.
"The Pope did not hesitate to reply; he appeared to me to be alarmed at the imprudence of instructing the Turks in military discipline. I give his own words:
"'If the Turks are already capable of resisting Russia, what will their power be when they have obtained a glorious peace? Who will prevent them, after four or five years spent in rest and in perfecting their new tactics, from hurling themselves upon Italy?'
"I will confess, monsieur le comte, that, when I recognised these ideas and these anxieties in the mind of the Sovereign most exposed to the effects of the consequence of the enormous error that has been committed, I congratulated myself on having displayed to you in fuller detail, in my Note on Eastern Affairs, the same ideas and the same anxieties.
"'Nothing,' added the Pope, 'except a firm resolution on the part of the Allied Powers, can put an end to a misfortune which threatens the future. France and England are still in time to stop everything; but, if a new campaign open, it can set Europe on fire, and then it will be too late to extinguish it.'
"'That reflection is the more just,' I answered, 'seeing that, if Europe were to become divided, which God forbid, the presence of fifty thousand Frenchmen would stir up the whole question again.'
"The Pope made no reply; only it appeared to me that the idea of seeing the French in Italy filled him with no sort of fear. Every one is weary of the inquisition of the Court of Vienna, of its cavilling, of its continual encroachments and of its little plots to unite the peoples which detest the Austrian yoke into a confederation against France.
"This, monsieur le comte, is a summary of my long conversation with His Holiness. I do not know that any one has ever been in a position to know more thoroughly the inner sentiments of the Pope, that any one has ever heard a prince who governs the Christian world express himself so plainly on subjects so vast and so far removed from the narrow circle of diplomatic commonplaces. Here there was no intermediary between the Sovereign Pontiff and myself and it was easy to see that Leo XII., thanks to his candid character and the impulse of a familiar conversation, dissimulated nothing and in no way sought to deceive.
"The leanings and wishes of the Pope are evidently towards France: when he assumed the Keys of St. Peter, he belonged to the faction of the zelanti; to-day he has sought his strength in moderation: that is what the habit of power always teaches. For this reason he is not beloved by the faction of cardinals which he has quitted. Finding no man of talent in the secular clergy, he has chosen his chief advisers among the regular clergy; hence it comes that the monks are on his side, while the prelates and the simple priests make a sort of opposition to him. The latter, when I arrived in Rome, all had their minds more or less infected with the lies of our congregation; they are now infinitely more reasonable; they all, generally speaking, blame the rising in arms of our clergy. It is curious to remark that the Jesuits have as many enemies here as in France: they have as their special adversaries the other religious and the heads of Orders. They had formed a plan by means of which they would have seized upon the public instruction in Rome to the exclusion of the others: the Dominicans have foiled that plan. The Pope is not very popular, because he administers well. His little army consists of old soldiers of Bonaparte, who have a very military bearing and keep excellent order on the high-roads. If material Rome has lost in picturesqueness, it has gained in cleanliness and healthiness. His Holiness plants trees and arrests hermits and beggars: another subject of complaint for the populace. Leo XII. is a great worker; he sleeps little and eats scarcely at all. Only one taste remains to him of his youth, that of sport, an exercise necessary to his health, which, for that matter, seems to be improving. He has a few shots with a fowling-piece in the vast enclosure of the Gardens of the Vatican. The zelanti find it very difficult to forgive him this innocent diversion. The Pope is reproached with the weakness and inconstancy of his affections.
"The radical vice of the political constitution of this country is easily seized upon: it is old men who appoint as sovereign an old man like themselves. This old man, when he becomes the master, in his turn appoints old men as cardinals. Turning in this vicious circle, the enervated supreme power is in this way always at the edge of the tomb. The prince never occupies the throne for a long enough period to execute the plans of improvement which he may have conceived. A pope ought to have sufficient resolution suddenly to promote a number of young cardinals, in such a way as to ensure at the next election the majority of a young pope. But the rules of Sixtus V.[708], which give the hat to palace employments, the empire of custom and habit, the interests of the people, who receive gratifications at each change of the tiara, the individual ambition of the cardinals, who wish for short reigns in order to multiply their chances of the papacy, these and a thousand other obstacles too long to narrate are opposed to the rejuvenation of the Sacred College.
"The conclusion of this dispatch, monsieur le comte, is that, in the present condition of affairs, the King can reckon entirely on the Court of Rome.
"Cautious as I am in my manner of seeing and feeling, if I have anything with which to reproach myself in the report which I have the honour to send you, it is that I have weakened rather than exaggerated the expression of His Holiness' words. My memory is very safe; I wrote down the conversation on leaving the Vatican and my private secretary has simply copied it word for word from my minutes. The latter, rapidly jotted down, were hardly legible to myself. You would never have been able to decipher them[709].
"I have the honour to be, etc."
To Madame Récamier
"Rome, Tuesday, 13 January 1829.
"Yesterday evening, at eight o'clock, I wrote you the letter which M. Du Viviers[710] is bringing you; this morning, on waking, I am writing to you again by the ordinary post, which leaves at noon. You know the poor ladies of Saint-Denis: they have been much neglected since the arrival of the great ladies of the Trinità-del-Monte; without being the enemy of the latter, I have taken the side of the former with Madame de Ch. For the last month, the ladies of Saint-Denis have been wishing to give a fête in honour of 'M. the Ambassador' and 'Madame the Ambassadress:' it took place yesterday at mid-day. Imagine a theatre arranged in a sort of sacristy with a platform giving on to the church; as actors, a dozen young girls from eight years to fourteen, who played the Machabées. They had themselves made their helmets and cloaks. They spoke their French lines with an enthusiasm and an Italian accent which were the funniest things in the world; they stamped their feet at energetic moments: there was a niece of Pius VII., a daughter of Thorwaldsen, and another daughter of Chauvin[711] the painter. They were incredibly pretty in their paper finery. The one who played the High Priest had a great black beard which delighted her but pricked her, and which she was constantly obliged to put right with a little thirteen-year-old white hand. As spectators, ourselves, a few mothers, the nuns, Madame Salvage, two or three priests and a further score of little school-girls, all in white, with veils. We had had cakes and ices brought from the Embassy. They played the piano between the acts. Imagine the hopes and joys which, must have preceded this fête at the convent, and the memories which will follow it! The whole ended with Vivat in æternum, sung by three nuns in the church."
"Rome, 15 January 1829.
"Yours again! Last night we had wind and rain as in France: I imagined them beating against your little window; I found myself transported to your little room, I saw your harp, your piano, your birds; you played me my favourite air, or Shakspeare's: and I was in Rome, far away from you! Four hundred leagues and the Alps separate us!
Amateur theatricals.
"I have received a letter from that witty lady who used sometimes to come to see me at the Foreign Office; you can judge how well she courts me: she is a furious Turcophile; Mahmud is a great man, who is in advance of his nation!
"This Rome, in whose midst I live, ought to teach me to despise politics. Here liberty and tyranny have both perished: I see the huddled ruins of the Roman Republic and the Empire of Tiberius; what is all this to-day blended in the same dust? Does not the Capuchin who sweeps that dust with his gown as he goes by seem to make the vanity of so many vanities even more perceptible? Nevertheless, I come back, in spite of myself, to the destinies of my poor country. I would wish it religion, glory and liberty, without thinking of my powerlessness to deck it with that triple crown."
"Rome, Thursday, 5 February 1829.
"Torre Vergata is a domain of monks situated at about a league from Nero's Tomb, on the left as you come from Rome, in the most beautiful and deserted spot: there is an immense number of ruins level with the ground covered with grass and thistle. I began an excavation there two days ago, on Tuesday, just after I had written to you. I was accompanied by Hyacinthe and by Visconti[712], who is directing the excavation. The weather was the loveliest in the world. A dozen men armed with spades and pickaxes, digging up tombs and ruins of houses and palaces amid profound solitude, offered a spectacle worthy of you. I uttered but one wish: that you might be there. I would gladly consent to live with you in a tent amid those ruins.
"I myself put my hand to the work; I discovered fragments of marble: the clues are excellent and I hope to find something to compensate me for the money wasted in this lottery of the dead; already I have a block of Greek marble large enough to make Poussin's bust. This excavation will become the object of my walks; I shall go and sit everyday in the midst of these remains. To which century, to which men did they belong? We are perhaps removing the most illustrious dust without knowing it. Perhaps an inscription will come to throw light upon some historic fact, to destroy some error, to establish some truth. And then, when I have gone away with my twelve half-naked peasants, all will fall back into oblivion and silence. Do you picture to yourself all the passions, all the interests which once bestirred themselves in these abandoned spots? There were masters and slaves, happy people and unhappy, beautiful persons who were beloved and ambitious people who wanted to be ministers. There remain a few birds and I, for but a very short time longer; soon we shall fly away. Tell me, do you think it worth while to be one of the members of the council of a little king of the Gauls, for me, an Armorican barbarian, a traveller among savages of a world unknown to the Romans and ambassador to the priests whom they used to throw to the lions? When I called to Leonidas at Lacedæmon, he did not answer: the sound of my footsteps at Torre Vergata will have roused nobody. And when I, in my turn, am in my grave, I shall not hear even the sound of your voice. I must therefore hurry to come closer to you and to put an end to all these idle fancies of the life of men. There is nothing good save retirement, nothing true save an attachment like yours."
"Rome, 7 February 1829.
"I have received a long letter from General Guilleminot[713]; he gives me a lamentable account of what he suffered during his journeys on the coasts of Greece: and yet Guilleminot was an ambassador; he had large ships and an army under his orders. To go, after our soldiers have left, to a country in which not a house nor a corn-field remains, among a few scattered men, driven by poverty to become brigands, is an impossible project for a woman[714].
My excavations.
"I shall go to my excavation this morning: yesterday we found the skeleton of a Gothic soldier and the arm of a female statue. It was as though one had come upon the destroyer together with the ruin he had made; we have great hopes of finding the statue this morning. If the architectural remains which I am uncovering are worth the trouble, I shall not break them up to sell the bricks, as is usually done: I shall leave them standing, and they will bear my name. They belong to the time of Domitian. We have an inscription which shows this: it is the good time of the Roman arts."
Dispatches to M. le Comte Portalis
"Rome, Monday, 9 February 1829.
"Monsieur le comte,
"His Holiness had a sudden attack this morning of the disorder to which he is subject; his life is in the most imminent danger. The order has been given to close all the theatres. I have just left the Cardinal Secretary of State, who is himself ill and who despairs of the Pope's life. The loss of this enlightened and modern Sovereign Pontiff would, at the present moment, be a real calamity for Christianity and especially for France. I thought it important, monsieur le comte, that His Majesty's Government should be warned of this probable event, so that it may be enabled to take such measures beforehand as it shall consider necessary. Consequently, I have dispatched a mounted courier to Lyons. This courier carries a letter which I am writing to Monsieur the Prefect of the Rhône, with a telegraphic dispatch which he will forward to you, and another letter which I am asking him to send you by express. If we have the misfortune to lose His Holiness, a fresh courier will bring you all the details to Paris.
"I have the honour to be, etc."
"Eight o'clock in the evening.
"The congregation of Cardinals already assembled has forbidden the Cardinal Secretary of State to give permits for post-horses. My courier will not be able to leave until after the departure of the courier of the Sacred College, in case of the Pope's death. I have tried to send a man to carry my dispatches to the Tuscan frontier. The bad roads and the absence of livery-horses have made this plan impracticable. Obliged to wait in Rome, which has become a kind of closed prison, I still hope that the news will reach you by telegraph a few hours before it is known to the other governments beyond the Alps. It might nevertheless happen that the courier sent to the Nuncio, who will necessarily leave before mine, will himself, when passing through Lyons, give you the news by telegraph."
Death of Leo XII.
"Tuesday, 10 February, nine o'clock in the morning.
"The Pope is dead; my courier is leaving. In a few hours he will be followed by M. le Comte de Montebello[715], attaché to the Embassy."
Rome, 10 February 1829.
"Monsieur le comte,
I dispatched to Lyons, about two hours ago, the special mounted courier who will forward to you the unexpected and deplorable news of the death of His Holiness. Now I am sending off M. le Comte de Montebello, attaché to the Embassy, to convey to you some necessary details.
"The Pope died of the hemorrhoidal affection to which he was subject. The blood being extravasated into the bladder occasioned a retention, which an attempt was made to relieve by means of a sound. His Holiness is believed to have been wounded in the course of the operation. In any case, after four days' suffering, Leo XII. expired this morning at nine o'clock, as I came to the Vatican, where an agent of the Embassy had passed the night. The letter sent by my first courier informs you, monsieur le comte, of my useless efforts to obtain a permit for post-horses before the Pope's death.
"Yesterday I called on the Cardinal Secretary of State, who was still very ill with a violent attack of gout; I had a rather long conversation with him on the consequences of the misfortune with which we were threatened. I lamented the death of a Prince whose moderate sentiments and whose knowledge of European affairs were so useful to the repose of Christianity.
"'It is not only a great misfortune for France,' answered the Secretary of State, 'but a greater misfortune for the Roman States than you imagine. Discontent and poverty are great in our provinces and, if the cardinals think fit to adopt a different system from that of Leo XII., they will find their work cut out for them. As for myself, my functions cease with the death of the Pope and I have nothing to reproach myself with.'
"This morning I again saw Cardinal Bernetti, who has, in fact, laid down his functions as Secretary of State: he spoke to me to the same effect as on the preceding day. I asked him to let me meet him before he secluded himself in the Conclave. We agreed that we should talk of electing a sovereign pontiff who should continue the system of moderation of Leo XII. I shall have the honour to communicate to you all the information that I may gather.
"It is probable that the death of the Pope and the fall of Cardinal Bernetti will delight the enemies of the ordinances[716], they will proclaim this unhappy event a punishment from Heaven. It is easy already to read that thought on certain French faces in Rome.
"I regret the Pope for more than one reason; I had had the good fortune to gain his confidence: the prejudices which had been carefully instilled into his mind against me, before my arrival, had become dispelled and he did me the honour, on all occasions, to bear witness, publicly and aloud, to the esteem in which he was good enough to hold me.
"Now, monsieur le comte, permit me to enter into the explanation of a few facts.
"I was Minister for Foreign Affairs at the time of the death of Pius VII. You will find in the boxes at the Office, if you think it advisable to look into the matter, the continuous account of my relations with M. le Duc de Laval. The custom is, on the death of a Pope, to send an extraordinary ambassador, or to accredit the resident ambassador through new letters to the Sacred College. The latter is the course which I proposed to His late Majesty, Louis XVIII., to follow. The King will do what he thinks best for his service. Four French cardinals came to Rome for the election of Leo XII. France to-day numbers five; a number of votes certainly not to be despised in the Conclave. I shall, monsieur le comte, await the King's orders. M. de Montebello, who is instructed to hand you this dispatch, will remain at your disposal.
"I have the honour to be, etc."
To Madame Récamier
"Rome, 10 February 1829, eleven d clock at night.
"I wished to write you a long letter; but the dispatch, which I was obliged to write with my own hand, and the fatigue of these last days have exhausted me.
"I regret the Pope; I had obtained his confidence. I am now charged with an important mission; it is impossible for me to know what the result will be, or what influence it will have over my destiny.
Conclave arrangements.
"The conclaves generally last two months, which will at least leave me free for Easter. I will soon talk to you thoroughly of all that.
"Picture to yourself that they found that poor Pope, on Thursday last, before he fell ill, writing his epitaph. They tried to divert him from such sad thoughts:
"'No, no,' he said; 'it will be over in a few days.'"
"Rome, Thursday, 12 February 1829.
"I read your newspapers. They often give me pain. I see in the Globe that Monsieur le Comte Portalis is, according to that journal, my declared enemy. Why? Do I ask his place? He is taking too much pains; I do not so much as think of him. I wish him all possible prosperity; but yet, if it were true that he wanted war, he would find me there. People seem to me to be talking nonsense about everything, both about the immortal Mahmud and the evacuation of the Morea.
"In the most probable event, this evacuation will put back Greece under the yoke of the Turks, with the loss to us of our honour and forty millions. There is a prodigious amount of wit in France, but we lack judgment and common-sense; two phrases make us drunk, we are led with words, and what is worse is that we are always ready to disparage our friends and exalt our enemies. Besides, is it not curious that they should make the King, in his Speech[717], use my own language on 'the agreement of the public liberties and the Royalty,' and that they should have found such fault with me for using that language? And the men who make the Crown speak thus were once the warmest partizans of the censorship! For the rest, I am going to see the election of the Head of Christianity; this spectacle is the last great spectacle that I shall witness in my life[718]; it will close my career.
"Now that pleasures have ceased in Rome, business is commencing. I shall be obliged, on the one hand, to write of all that happens to the Government and, on the other, to fulfil the duties of my new position. I must compliment the Sacred College and attend the funeral of the Holy Father, to whom I had become attached because he was but little loved, and the more so in that, fearing that I should find an enemy in him, I found a friend who, from the chair of St. Peter, formally gave the lie to my 'Christian' calumniators. Then the French cardinals are going to come down upon me. I have written to make representations at least touching the Archbishop of Toulouse[719].
"In the midst of all this stir, the Poussin monument is being executed; the excavation is successful; I have found three fine heads, a draped female torso, a funeral inscription by a brother to a young sister, which touched me.
"Talking of inscriptions, I told you that the poor Pope had made his on the day before that on which he was taken ill, predicting that he was soon going to die. He has left a writing in which he recommends his indigent family to the Roman Government: only those who have loved much have such great virtues."
[500] This book was written in Rome in 1828 and 1829, and revised in February 1845.—T.
[501] In re-reading those manuscripts, I have merely added a few passages from works published subsequently to the date of my embassy to Rome.—Author's Note.