The Marquis Capponi[62] arrived from Florence, bringing me letters of recommendation from ladies in Paris. I replied to one of these letters on the 21st of March 1829:
"I have received your letters: the services I am able to do are nothing, but I am entirely at your orders. I was already well acquainted with the Marquis Capponi's merits. I can tell you that he is still good-looking; he has weathered time. I did not answer your first letter, so full of enthusiasm for the sublime Mahmud and for 'disciplined' barbarism, for those slaves 'bastinadoed' into soldiers[63]. I can imagine that women are carried away with admiration for men who marry hundreds of them at a time, and that they take that for the progress of enlightenment and civilization; but, as for me, I cling to my poor Greeks; I desire their liberty as I do that of France. I also want frontiers which will cover Paris and ensure our independence; and it is not by means of the triple alliance of the pale of Constantinople, the schlag of Vienna and the fisticuffs of London that you will obtain the bank of the Rhine. Many thanks for the fur-coat of honour which our glory might obtain from the invincible Commander of the Faithful, who has not yet sallied from the outskirts of his seraglio; I prefer that glory naked; she is a woman and beautiful: Phidias would certainly never have robed her in a Turkish dressing-gown."
To Madame Récamier
Rome, 21 March 1829.
"Well, I am right and you are wrong! I went yesterday, between two ballots and while waiting for a pope, to Sant' Onofrio: and it is two orange-trees that grow in the cloister, and not an evergreen oak. I am quite proud of this fidelity of my memory. I ran, almost with my eyes shut, to the little stone that covers your friend; I prefer it to the great monument they are going to raise to him. What a charming solitude! What an admirable view! What happiness to lie there between the frescoes of Domenichino[64] and Leonardo da Vinci! I wish I were there, I never felt so tempted. Did they let you enter the interior of the convent? Did you see, in a long corridor, that delicious, though half-obliterated, head of a Madonna by Leonardo da Vinci? Did you see in the library Tasso's mask, his withered laurel-wreath, a mirror which he used, his ink-stand, his pen and the letter written by his hand, pasted to a board that hangs below his bust? In this letter, in a small, scratched-out, but easily legible hand, he speaks of 'friendship' and the 'wind of fortune;' the latter scarcely ever blew for him, and the former often failed him.
"No pope yet, we expect him hourly; but, if the choice has been delayed, if obstacles have arisen on every hand, it is not my fault: they ought to have listened to me a little more, and not acted in a sense exactly opposite to that which they seemed to decide upon. For the rest, it seems to me at present that every one wants to be at peace with me. The Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre himself has just written to tell me that he claims my former kindness for him; and after all that he comes to stay with me resolved to vote for the most moderate pope.
"You have read my second speech. Thank M. Kératry[65], who has spoken so obligingly of the first; I hope he will be still more pleased with the other. We shall both of us try to make liberty Christian, and we shall succeed. What do you say to the answer Cardinal Castiglioni made me? Have I been finely enough praised 'in open conclave'? You could not have done better in the days when you spoilt me."
Letters to Madame Récamier.
"24 March 1829.
"If I were to believe the rumours of Rome, we should have a pope to-morrow; but 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? French light-heartedness, the interests of the moment, the discussions in the Chambers, excited ambitions have very different things to do. When the Duc de Laval used also to write to me of his cares about the Conclave, preoccupied with the Spanish War as I was, I used to say, when I received his dispatches, 'Oh, good Heavens, I have something else to think of!' and M. Portalis is applying the lex talionis to me to-day. Nevertheless, one may fairly say that things at that time were not what 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 the letter which informed me that M. de La Ferronnays' 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 Hyères; he tells me that he is dying, and still he wants a place in the Academy of Inscriptions and asks me to write for him. I am going to do so. My excavation continues to give me sarcophaguses; death can only yield what it possesses. The Poussin monument is getting on. It will be noble and large. You cannot imagine how the picture of the Arcadian Shepherds was made for a bas-relief, nor how well it suits sculpture."
"28 March.
"M. le Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre, who has been staying with me, enters the Conclave to-day; this is an age of marvels. I have with me the son of Marshal Lannes and the grandson of the Chancellor[66]; Messieurs du Constitutionnel dine at my table beside Messieurs de la Quotidienne. That is the advantage of being sincere; let every one 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, better than the others. 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[67]
"Rome, 24 March 1829.
"I am sorry, monsieur 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[68], who told me nothing save diplomatic commonplaces. 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 any one in particular; it has left the matter entirely as I reported it. Seven or 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, if 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, monsieur 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 Blacas and Récamier.
To Madame Récamier
"Rome, 31 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 that cupola of Michael Angelo and above that temple of the Christians which crushes Ancient Rome."
"31 March, evening.
"Victory! I have one of the Popes 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 Rhone is the intermediary of this aerial correspondence, and this prefect is M. de Brosses, son of that Comte de Brosses, 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 M. Portalis.
"I never have two consecutive days of good health now; this makes me furious, for 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 Messagers 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.'"
"3 April.
"I forgot to tell you that, as Cardinal Fesch 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."
Dispatch to Portalis.
Dispatch to M. le comte Portalis
"Rome, 2 April 1829.
"Monsieur le comte,
"Cardinal Albani has been appointed Secretary of State, as I had the honour to inform you in my first letter carried to Lyons 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, an Anti-Jesuit, rude in his manner, and an Italian above everything. Rich and excessively avaricious, Cardinal Albani is mixed up in all sorts of enterprises and speculations. I went yesterday to pay 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, monsieur le comte. 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 5th of April.
"Now, monsieur le comte, that the principal business which kept me in Rome is ended, I shall be infinitely obliged to you if you will obtain for me from His Majesty's kindness a 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 or is 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, M. Bellocq[69] and M. de Givré[70], 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 M. le Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre 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."
To His Eminence Monseigneur le Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre
"Rome, 28 March 1829.
"Monseigneur,
"Unable to communicate with your colleagues, Messieurs the French cardinals, confined in the Monte Cavallo Palace; obliged to provide for every thing 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 M. le Cardinal Albani appears to have no chance, he is none the less 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: M. le Comte de Lützow has already designated him in that quality in his speech. Now it is impossible to allow the elevation to the Sovereign Pontificate of a cardinal openly belonging to a crown, whether it be the Crown of France or any other.
"Consequently, monseigneur, 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 M. 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 suffrages.
"I am, etc., etc."