To Madame Récamier
"Rome, 3 March 1829.
"I am quite surprised at your acquaintance with the story of my excavation; I did not remember having written you so well on that subject. I am, as you think, very busy: left without directions or instructions, I am obliged to take everything upon myself. I believe, however, that I can promise you a moderate and enlightened pope, if God only grant that he be made at the expiration of the interim of M. Portalis' ministry."
"4 March.
"Yesterday, Ash Wednesday, I was on my knees alone in the Church of Santa Croce, which rests against the walls of Rome, near the Porta di Napoli. I heard the monotonous and lugubrious chanting of the monks within that solitude: I should have liked myself to be in a frock, singing among those ruins. What a spot to appease ambition and to contemplate the vanities of earth! While I am suffering, I hear that M. de La Ferronnays is getting better; he rides on horseback, and his convalescence is looked upon in the country as miraculous: God grant that it be so, and that he may resume work at the end of the interim. What a number of questions that would solve for me!"
Dispatch to Portalis.
Dispatch to M. le comte Portalis
"Sunday[53] 15 March 1829.
"Monsieur le comte,
"I have had the honour to inform you of the successive arrivals of their Eminences the French cardinals. Three of them, Messieurs de Latil, de La Fare[54] and de Croy[55] have done me the honour to be my guests. The first entered the Conclave on Thursday evening the 12th, with M. le Cardinal Isoard[56]; the two others locked themselves in on Friday evening the 13th.
"I told them all I know; I gave them important notes on the minority and majority in the Conclave, and on the sentiments which animate the different parties. We agreed that they should support the candidates of whom I have already spoken to you, namely, Cardinals Capellari, Oppizzoni, Benvenuti, Zurla, Castiglioni and, lastly, Pacca and Di Gregorio; and that they should reject the cardinals of the Sardinian faction: Pedicini, Giustiniani, Galleffi, and Cristaldi[57].
"I hope that this good intelligence between the ambassadors and cardinals will have the best effect: at least I shall have nothing with which to reproach myself if passions or interests intervene to deceive my hopes.
"I have, monsieur le comte, discovered dangerous and contemptible intrigues carried on between Paris and Rome through the channel of Monsignor Lambruschini, the Nuncio[58]. It was no less a question than to cause to be read, in open conclave, a copy of some pretended secret instructions, divided into several clauses and given (so it was impudently asserted) to M. le Cardinal de Latil. The majority of the Conclave has pronounced strongly against these machinations; it wished the Nuncio to be instructed to break off all relations with those men of discord who, while troubling France, would end by making the Catholic Religion hateful to all. I am, monsieur le comte, making a collection of these authentic revelations, and I will send it to you after the election of the pope: that will be worth more than all the dispatches in the world. The King will learn to know who are his friends and who his enemies, and the Government will be able to rely on facts suited to guide its conduct
"Your Dispatch No. 14 informs me of the encroachments which His Holiness' Nuncio endeavoured to renew in France in connection with the death of Leo XII. The same thing had happened before, when I was Foreign Minister, at the time of the death of Pius VII.: fortunately, we always have means of defending ourselves against those public attacks; it is much more difficult to escape the plots laid in the dark.
"The conclavists who accompany our cardinals appeared to me to be reasonable men: the Abbé Coudrin[59] alone, whom you mentioned to me, is one of those cramped and narrow minds into which nothing can enter, one of those men who have mistaken their profession. As you are well aware, he is a monk, head of an order, and he even has bulls of institution: this is but little in agreement with our civil laws and our political institutions.
"It may happen that the pope will be elected at the end of this week. But, if the French cardinals fail to make their presence felt at once, it will become impossible to assign a limit to the duration of the Conclave. New combinations would perhaps bring about an unexpected nomination: to have done with it, they might agree on some insignificant cardinal, such as Dandini[60].
"In times gone by, monsieur le comte, I have found myself placed in difficult circumstances, whether as Ambassador to London, or as Minister during the Spanish War, or as a member of the House of Peers, or Leader of the Opposition; but nothing has given me so much anxiety and care as my present position in the midst of every kind of intrigue. I have to act upon an invisible body locked up in a prison, the approaches to which are strictly guarded. I have no money to give, no places to promise; the decaying passions of fifty old men give me no hold on them. I have to fight against stupidity in some, against ignorance of the times in others; fanaticism in these, craft and duplicity in those; in almost all, ambition, self-interest, political hatred: and I am separated by walls and mysteries from the assembly in which so many elements of division are fermenting. At each moment, the scene varies; every quarter of an hour, contradictory reports plunge me into fresh perplexities. I am not, monsieur le comte, telling you of these difficulties to show my importance, but rather to serve as my excuse in case the election should result in a pope contrary to what it seems to promise and to the nature of our wishes. At the time of the death of Pius VII., public opinion was not excited over religious questions: to-day, these questions have begun to play their part in politics, and never did the election of the Head of the Church fall at a less auspicious moment
"I have the honour to be, etc."
Letter to Madame Récamier.
To Madame Récamier
Rome, 17 March 1829.
"The King of Bavaria[61] has called in mufti to see me. We spoke of you. This 'Greek' sovereign, though he wears a crown, seems to know what he has on his head, and to understand that you cannot nail the present to the past. He is to dine with me on Thursday, and wants no one there.
"For the rest, behold us in the midst of great events: a pope to be made; what will he be like? Will Catholic Emancipation be passed? A new campaign in the East: on which side will victory be? Shall we profit by this position? Who will conduct our affairs? Is there a head capable of perceiving all that this contains for France and of profiting by it according to events? I am persuaded that they do not so much as think of it in Paris and that, what with the salons and the Chambers, pleasures and legislation, worldly joys and ministerial anxieties, they don't trouble about Europe or anything else. Only I myself, in my exile, have time to indulge in dreams and to look about me. Yesterday I went for a walk in a sort of gale on the old Tivoli Road. I came to the old Roman pavement, which is so well preserved that one would believe it had been newly laid. Yet Horace had trod the stones which I was treading: where is Horace?"
Louise of Stolberg (Countess of Albany)