The Roman Embassy continued--Letter to Madame Récamier--Dispatch
to M. le Comte Portalis--Conclaves--Dispatches to M. le
Comte Portalis--Letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatch to M.
le Comte Portalis--Letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatch to
M. le Comte Portalis--Letter to Madame Récamier--Letter to
the Marchese Capponi--Letters to Madame Récamier--Letter to
M. le Duc de Blacas--Letters to Madame Récamier--Dispatch to
M. le Comte Portalis--Letter to Monseigneur le Cardinal de
Clermont-Tonnerre--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Letters to Madame
Récamier--Dispatches to M. le Comte Portalis--Fête at the Villa
Medici for the Grand-duchess Helen--My relations and correspondence
with the Bonaparte Family--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Monte
Cavallo--Dispatch to M. le Comte Portalis--Letter to Madame
Récamier--Presumption--The French in Rome--Walks--My nephew Christian
de Chateaubriand--Letter to Madame Récamier--I return to Paris--My
plans--The King and his disposition--M. Portalis--M. de Martignac--I
leave for Rome--The Pyrenees--Adventures--The Polignac Ministry--My
consternation--I come back to Paris--Interview with M. de Polignac--I
resign my Roman Embassy.
ROME, 17 _February_ 1829.
Before passing to important matters, I will recall a few facts.
On the decease 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
Camerlingo. 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 were lowered into the subterranean church.
TO MADAME RÉCAMIER
"ROME, 17 _February_ 1829.
"I have seen Leo XII. lying in state, with his face uncovered, on a
paltry state bed, amid the master-pieces of Michael Angelo; 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
moon-light, the coffin was at last raised by a pulley and hung up
in the shadows to be laid in the sarcophagus of Pius VII.[2]
"They have just brought me the poor Pope's little cat; it is quite
grey and very gentle, like its old master."
[Sidenote: Dispatch to Portalis.]
DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS
"ROME, 17 February 1829.
"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,
"I had the honour to inform you in my first letter carried to Lyons
with the telegraphic dispatch, and in my Dispatch No. 15, of the
difficulties which I encountered in sending off my two couriers
on the 10th of this month. These people have not got beyond the
history of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, as though 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 the cells in the Quirinal Palace.
"I shall not speak to you, monsieur le comte, of the views of the
Austrian Court or the wishes of the Cabinets of Naples, Madrid and
Turin. M. le Duc le Laval, in his correspondence with me in 1823,
has described the personal qualities of the cardinals, who are in
part those of to-day. I refer you to No. 5 and its appendix, Nos.
34, 55, 70 and 82. There 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 interest of society, but from the particular interest
of individuals and families, who seek places and money in the
election of the Head of the Church.
"There are immense 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 an 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 elected Cardinal Della Genga[3], after the
exclusion of Cardinal Severoli, because they thought that he
was going to die; Della Genga taking it into his head to live,
they detested him cordially for that piece of deceit. Leo 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, abuses 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 Carnival, have caused the memory to be anathematized
of a Prince worthy of the liveliest regret; at Cività-Vecchia 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
Capellari[4], the head of the Propaganda, Cardinal Pacca[5],
Cardinal Di Gregorio[6] and Cardinal Giustiniani[7].
"Cardinal Capellari is a learned and capable man. They say that he
will 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 ardent 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 concordat 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 this
points to a reasonable, conciliatory and moderate spirit. I have
these details from Cardinal Bernetti, 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 intercourse and accustomed to the affairs of Europe.
Cardinal Bernetti is the minister who suits us best in every
respect; he has committed himself on our behalf with the _Zelanti_
and the 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 Capellari.'
"Cardinals Pacca and Di Gregorio are faithfully depicted in the
appendix to No. 5 of the correspondence already mentioned; but
Cardinal Pacca is very much enfeebled by age, and his memory, like
that of the Senior Cardinal, La Somaglia[8], is beginning to fail
him entirely.
[Sidenote: Candidates for the Papacy.]
"Cardinal Di Gregorio would be a suitable Pope. Although he ranks
among the _Zelanti_, he is not without moderation; he thrusts back
the Jesuits, who have as many adversaries and enemies here as in
France. Neapolitan subject though he be, Cardinal Di Gregorio is
rejected by Naples, and still more by Cardinal Albani[9], the
executor of the high decrees of Austria. The cardinal is Legate at
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 Odescalchi 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
indigence.
"You are aware, monsieur le comte, 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 hebraist,
a hellenist, a mathematician, but better suited for the work of the
study than for public business. I do not believe that he is backed
by Austria.
"After all, human foresight is often deceived; often a man changes
on attaining power; the _zelante_ Cardinal Della 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
Castiglioni[10], Cardinal Benvenuti, Cardinal Galleffi[11],
Cardinal Arezzo[12], Cardinal Gamberini, and even the old and
venerable Dean of the Sacred College, La Somaglia, 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 Ostia, 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 'conclavists' and 'anti-conclavists'
have totally disappeared, which will make the election easier.
But, on the other hand, there will 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_[13], 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 Severoli, through the intermediary of
Cardinal Albani. Against whom would the Crown of France exercise
that right? 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 as though ready to strike at the election of the
Conclave, if it were displeasing to Charles X.? Lastly, has the
Government a choice of predilection? Is there such or such a
cardinal whom it wants to support? Certainly, if 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.
[Sidenote: Reasons against interference.]
"It is asserted that the Primate of Hungary and the Archbishop of
Milan will come to the Conclave. The Austrian Ambassador in Rome,
Count Lützow, talks very cleverly of the conciliatory character
which the new Pope must have. Let us await the instructions of
Vienna.
"Moreover, I am persuaded that all the ambassadors on earth can do
nothing to-day 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 M. le Duc 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 Della Genga, on the 28th of January 1824, I
again said to M. le Duc 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, monsieur le comte, to-day, 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 suffrages.
"The cardinals favourable to the Jesuits are Giustiniani,
Odescalchi, Pedicini[14] and Bertalozzi[15].
"The cardinals opposed to the Jesuits, owing to different causes
and different circumstances, are Zurla[16], Di Gregorio, Bernetti,
Capellari and Micara[17].
"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 would effect the election.
"The Spanish Minister, M. de Labrador, a solitary and secluded man,
whom I suspect of being frivolous under an appearance of gravity,
is greatly embarrassed by the part he is called upon to play. The
instructions of his Court have foreseen nothing; he is writing in
that sense to His Catholic Majesty's _chargé d'affaires_ at Lucca.
"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 law of election, which already counts eighteen hundred
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 Redeemer 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.
[Sidenote: The early Popes.]
Peter[18] 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 ploughs, born of a woman according to the flesh,
and yet God and Son of God, as His works prove.
The Popes had the mission to avenge and maintain the rights of man; the
heads of public opinion, all feeble though they were, they obtained the
strength to dethrone kings with a word and an idea: for a 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 priest whose name was hardly known to them,
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 arts. 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, favouring the Guelphs, declared themselves for the governments
of the peoples; the Emperors, adopting the Ghibellines, 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 Ghibellines, 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 their 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
a pontiff's forgiveness; those kingdoms laid under an interdict; an
entire nation deprived of worship by a magic word; those anathematized
sovereigns, abandoned not only by their subjects, but also by their
servants and kindred; those princes avoided 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 sullied: all this was but 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 to-day: from that priest 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[19], the
Bishop of Rome was named the Bishop of Bishops. The clergy, forming
part of the people, concurred in the election. As passions exist
everywhere, as they debase the fairest institutions and the most
virtuous characters, in the measure that the papal 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 two Gracchi, one[20] was flung into the Tiber,
the other[21] stabbed by a slave in a wood consecrated to the Furies.
The nomination of Pope Damasus[22], in 366, led to an affray attended
by bloodshed: one hundred and thirty-seven people succumbed in the
Sicinian Basilica, known to-day as Santa Maria Maggiore.
[Sidenote: History of their election.]
We find St. Gregory[23] elected Pope by the Clergy, the Senate and the
People of Rome. Any Christian could rise to the tiara: Leo IV.[24] was
promoted to the Sovereign Pontificate, on the 12th of 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: Simplicius[25] ascended the See of Bourges, layman though he
were. To this day (which is not generally known) the choice of the
Conclave might fall on a layman, even if he 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
Louis the Débonnaire[26] restores its primitive liberty to the election
of the bishops, which was accomplished according to a treaty of the
same time, by "the unanimous consent of the clergy and the people."
The dangers of an election proclaimed by the masses of the people or
dictated by the emperors made necessary certain changes in the law.
There existed, in Rome, priests and deacons known as "cardinals,"
whether because they served at the horns or corners of the altar, _ad
cornua altaris_, or that the word cardinal is derived from the Latin
word _cardo_, a hinge. Pope Nicholas II.[27], in a council held in Rome
in 1059, carried a resolution that the cardinals alone should elect the
popes and that the clergy and the people should ratify the election.
One hundred and twenty years later, the Lateran Council[28] 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 law, to put an end to that discord. In 1268, after the death of
Clement IV.[29], 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 palace, and even, it is said, to unroof that palace in order
to compel the electors to make a choice. At last Gregory X.[30] came
out of the ballot, and thereupon, to remedy this abuse in future,
established the Conclave, _cum clave_, with or under key; he regulated
the internal dispositions of the Conclave in much the same manner as
they exist to-day: separate cells, a common room for the balloting,
walled-up outer 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 Lyons 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 were not made in
three days of confinement, 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.
To-day 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 dapifer follows
the convoy, sword at side, and drawn by caparisoned horses in the
emblazoned 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, lest 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 at
it and despises 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's Supper and the love-feasts, and Christ alone should
to-day preside over those banquets.
[Sidenote: Intrigues of the Conclaves.]
The intrigues of the conclaves are famous; some of them had baneful
results. During the Western Schism, different popes and anti-popes were
seen to curse and excommunicate one another from the top of the ruined
walls of Rome. The schism seemed on the point of extinction, when Pedro
de Luna[31] revived it, in 1394, through an intrigue of the conclave
at Avignon. Alexander VI.[32], in 1492, bought the votes of twenty-two
cardinals, who prostituted the tiara to him, leaving memories of
Lucrezia[33] 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 V.'s sister, a woman of the people, whom the terrible pontiff,
in all his plebeian pride, pleased himself by having painted:
"The first arms of our house," he said to this sister, "are rags[34]."
That was still the time at which some sovereigns dictated orders to the
Sacred College. Philip II. used to have notes passed into the conclave,
saying:
"_Su Magestad no quiere que N. sea Papa; quiere que N. to tenga._"
From that period, the intrigues of the conclave are scarcely more than
agitations without general results. Nevertheless, Du Perron[35] and
d'Ossat obtained the reconciliation of Henry IV. with the Holy See,
which was a great event. The _Ambassades_ of Du Perron are greatly
inferior to the Letters of d'Ossat. Before then, Du Bellay was at one
time on the point of preventing the schism of Henry VIII.[36] 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 about to be
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 the
sentence to be pronounced, and the bearer of the powers 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 too capacious goblet emptied at
Babylon caused Alexander to disappear.
Next comes to Rome, in the time of Olimpia[37], the Cardinal de Retz,
who, in the conclave held after the death of Innocent X.[38], enlisted
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.[39], _savio col silenzio_, who, as Pope,
showed himself to be nothing much.
[Illustration: Henry IX. (Cardinal of York)]
The Président de Brosses describes the death of Clement XII.[40], which
he witnessed, and saw the election of Benedict XIV.[41]--as I saw
Leo XII. the Pontiff lying dead on his abandoned bed: the Cardinal
Camerlingo had struck Clement XII. twice or thrice on the forehead,
according to the custom, with a little hammer, calling him by his name,
Lorenzo Corsini.
"He made no reply," says de Brosses, and adds, "That is how your
daughter comes to be dumb[42]."
And that is how at that time the most serious things were treated:
a dead pope 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 raillery, even though it were borrowed from Molière. What
would the frivolous Dijon magistrate have said had Clement XII.
answered him from the depths of eternity:
"What do you want with me?"
[Sidenote: Cynicism of de Brosses.]
The Président de Brosses sends his friend the Abbé Courtois a list
of the cardinals of the Conclave, with a word on each of them to his
honour:
"Guadagni[43], a bigot, a hypocrite, witless, tasteless, a poor
monk.
"Aquaviva of Aragon, a fine presence, although somewhat heavy in
figure, as he is also in mind.
"Ottoboni[44], no morals, no credit, debauched, ruined, a lover of
the arts.
"Alberoni[45], full of ardour, anxious, restless, despised, no
morals, no decency, no consideration, no judgment: 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 Brosses went to dine with
some Englishmen at the Porta San Pancrazio; they had a mock election of
a pope: a certain Sir Ashwood took off his wig and represented the dean
of the cardinals; they sang _Oremus_, and Cardinal Alberoni was 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 del Popolo. The government and manners of the
day would no longer suffer such scandals.
So soon as a 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 lived 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 obtained at the Court of Henry III.; with
the same familiarity that is seen in the colleges; with the same
modesty that prevails in noviciates, 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 burlesque manner in
which it ends: the greatness of the Son of God opens the scene which,
shrinking in proportion as the Catholic Religion moves farther 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 naught
in the head of the evangelical world. Honours 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 old the sinner did penance.
[Sidenote: Dispatches to Portalis.]
DISPATCHES TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS
"ROME, 17 _February_ 1829.
"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,
"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, I have the
honour to observe to you that I allowed M. le Duc de 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, M. le Comte d'Apponyi[46],
at 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, chancery expenses, etc.
I do not, monsieur le comte, pretend to compete in magnificence
with His Excellency the Austrian Ambassador, as M. le Duc de 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
wretched. I shall therefore go modestly to the Conclave 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, etc."
"ROME, 19 _February_ 1829.
"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,
"I had the honour yesterday to be presented to the Sacred College
and to deliver the little speech of which I sent you a copy in
advance in my Dispatch No. 17, which left on Tuesday the 17th inst.
by a special courier. I was listened to with the most auspicious
marks of satisfaction, and the Senior Cardinal, the venerable Della
Somaglia, 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 to-day, unless it be that
Cardinal Bussi[47] arrived yesterday from Benevento. Cardinals
Albani, Macchi[48], and Oppizzoni are expected to-day.
"The members of the Sacred College will lock themselves up in the
Quirinal Palace on Monday evening the 23rd of this month. Ten 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, monsieur le comte, awaiting the King's orders. I presume
that you dispatched a courier to me after M. de Montebello'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
Monseigneur le Cardinal de Latil[49] 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 M. le Comte de Funchal
has written to me. I have not replied to this ambassador in
writing; I only went to talk to him."
TO MADAME RÉCAMIER
"ROME, _Monday_ 23 _February_ 1829.
"Yesterday the Pope's obsequies were finished. The pyramid of
'paper' and the four candelabra were fine enough, because they
were of immense proportions and reached up to the cornice of the
church. The last _Dies iræ_ 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. To-day
we pass from sorrow to joy; we sing the _Veni Creator_ for the
opening of the Conclave; then we shall go every evening to see if
the ballot-papers are burnt, if the smoke issues from a certain
chimney: on the day on which there is 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 Morean
Expedition is! Are they beginning to see it? General Guilleminot
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."
[Sidenote: Letters to Madame Récamier.]
"25 _February._
"Death is here; Torlonia went yesterday evening after two days'
illness; I have seen him lying all painted on his death-bed, his
sword at his side. He lent 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 lute, 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[50].'
"One sees 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 is something melancholy
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 'Misses' 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 masters
shall be no more. St. Peter's and the Coliseum: that is all that
she herself would recognise."
DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS
"ROME, 3 _March_ 1829.
"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,
"My first courier having reached Lyons, on the 14th 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 15th. It
is to-day the 3rd 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 had written to Paris to
Monseigneur le Cardinal de Latil to place the Embassy Palace at his
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, monsieur le comte, that I
notice 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 who may obstruct him.
"I hope, monsieur le comte, that no division will take place, that
Their 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
ballots revealed the awakening of a party. This party, which gave
twenty or twenty-one votes to Cardinals Della Marmora[51] and
Pedicini, forms what is known here as the Sardinian faction. The
other cardinals, alarmed, want all to give their suffrages to
Oppizzoni, a man both firm and moderate. Although an Austrian,
that is to say, a Milanese, he coped against Austria at Bologna.
He would be an excellent choice. The votes of the French might,
by settling on one candidate or another, decide the election.
Rightly or wrongly, these cardinals are believed 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[52]."
[Sidenote: To Portalis and Récamier.]
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!"
[Sidenote: 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."
[Sidenote: 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?"
[Illustration: Louise of Stolberg (Countess of Albany)]
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."
[Sidenote: 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."
[Sidenote: 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."
[Sidenote: 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."
[Sidenote: The letter of exclusion.]
This letter of exclusion, entrusted to a cardinal by an ambassador who
is not formally authorized 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 for ever as a politician.
I say this, not for myself, who care little for a 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 M. 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 to-day does not care two sous for the nomination of a
pope, the rivalries of crowns, or the internal intrigues of a conclave.
DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS
_Confidential._
"ROME, 2 _April_ 1829.
"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,
"I have the honour to-day to send you the important documents
which I promised you. These are nothing less than the secret
and 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 inasmuch as we owe these revelations not to
interest and corruption, but to confidence in French honour. This
document, monsieur le comte, must therefore remain for ever secret
after it has been read in the King's Council; for, in spite of
the precautions which I have taken to keep names 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, and His Majesty's Ministers will not be walking in
the dark.
"The commentary which I have 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 honour
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" or "remarks" which
I added to that translation. But the same discretion which made me
charge the Minister to keep the document for ever 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, fifty
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 M. 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.
[Sidenote: A secret document.]
The Nuncio Lambruschini declared to the Conclave that the Cardinal de
Latil had the King's secret; all the efforts of the faction tended
to create the belief that Charles X. and his Government were not in
agreement.
On the 13th of March, the Cardinal de Latil 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: the fact 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 any one. 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 protonotary 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 secretaryship of State
to Austria.
TO MADAME RÉCAMIER
"ROME, _Wednesday_ 8 _April_ 1829.
"This day I have 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; everything 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 Campagna, 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 eleven o'clock in the evening, they received in Paris my
telegraphic dispatch from Rome to Toulon announcing the election of
Cardinal Castiglioni, and that the King is greatly pleased.
"The rapidity of these communications is prodigious; my courier
left at eight o'clock in the evening on the 31st of March, and at
eight o'clock in the evening on the 8th of April I received a reply
from Paris."
"11 _April_ 1829.
"To-day is the 11th of April: in eight days we shall have Easter
with us, in fifteen 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. To-morrow 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 Campagna, now covered with flowers and verdure. All the ruins
seem to become young with the new year: I am of their number."
[Sidenote: To Récamier and Portalis.]
_Wednesday in Holy Week_, 15 _April._
"I have just left the Sistine Chapel, where I attended Tenebræ and
heard the _Miserere_ sung. I remembered 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 Michael Angelo's brush. The candles, extinguished one
by one in turns, sent forth from their stifled flames a slender
white smoke, a very natural image of life, which Scripture compares
to a little smoke[71]. 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 precedence with monarchs, a poor old paralyzed
Pope, without family or support, Princes of the Church, without
splendour, announced the end of a power which has civilized the
modern world. The master-pieces 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. The heart was seized
with a two-fold 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 Jeremias addressed
to the old."
[Sidenote: To Récamier and Portalis.]
DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS
"ROME, 16 _April_ 1829.
"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,
"Things are developing here as I had the honour to foreshadow
to you; the words and actions of the new Pope are in complete
agreement with the pacificatory system followed by Leo XII.: Pius
VIII. 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 M. le Comte de Celles will
complete 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-humour. 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 fanaticism or with the moderate opinions 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 cypher correspondence;
to allow the Legations to be occupied or to place an Austrian
garrison at Ancona on some pretext or other 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 is not to
be satisfied before our eyes with impunity. And so, that Cardinal
Albani is in receipt of a pension from Prince Metternich; that
he is a kinsman of the Duke of Modena[72], 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[73]: all that is true, all that would have been dangerous
at the time when secret and absolute governments set soldiers
dimly in movement behind the shelter of a dim dispatch; but, in
these days, with public governments, with liberty of the press
and of free speech, with the telegraph and 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 there are drawbacks attached to an _Austrian chargé
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 interests 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 stands
in need; others pretend that this sum will be lent by an Austrian
banker. Cardinal Macchi told me on Saturday last that His Holiness,
not wishing to re-appoint Cardinal Bernetti and desirous,
nevertheless, of giving him a big place, found no other means of
arranging things than to make vacant the Bologna Legation. Wretched
little difficulties often become the motives of the most important
resolutions. If Cardinal Macchi's version is the true one, all that
Pius VIII. is doing and 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 Albania ministry will last. So
soon as he begins to enter into relations with the ambassadors,
difficulties will spring up on every hand.
[Sidenote: The position of Italy.]
"As to the position of Italy, monsieur le comte, 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 manner in which the
Court lives in the midst of its guards, for ever trembling, for
ever 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 reputed sacred on the other
side of that brook. It is in this sense, monsieur le comte, 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 manœuvres of
the police and mercilessly hanged, that will rouse the country to
revolt. Governments are given the falsest ideas of the true state
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 le comte, 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 fifty millions and do
not leave the landlord one per cent, 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 abuses) for the sale of prohibited merchandise, which
he passes at night into the Bologna Legation[74].
"I have already, monsieur le comte, 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 Cæsar. The habits of an idle life
and the charm of the climate contribute 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 we and instructed by our
experience, the people would be sparing in the crimes and miseries
with which we were lavish.
"I have no doubt, monsieur le comte, that I shall soon receive the
leave for which I asked you: I shall perhaps use it. At the moment,
therefore, of leaving Italy, I have thought it 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."
[Sidenote: Expensive visitors.]
DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS
"ROME, 16 _April_ 1829.
"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,
"Messieurs the French cardinals are very eager to know what sum
will be 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 le comte, when you were good enough
to allow me an additional sum of thirty thousand francs, you were
under the impression that none of the cardinals would stay with me.
Now M. de Clermont-Tonnerre put up here with his suite, consisting
of two conclavists, an ecclesiastical 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[75],
does not dine at my table; he requires two or three courses at
different hours, and horses and carriages 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 laundress, the livery-stable keeper, etc.,
etc., 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 'confectioned' the cloaks, cassocks, neck-bands, the
whole outfit of the cardinal and his abbés.
"If to this, monsieur le comte, you add my extraordinary expenses
for costs of representation, which expenses have been increased
by the presence of the Grand-duchess Helen, Prince Paul of
Wurtemberg[76] and the King of Bavaria, you will no doubt find that
the thirty thousand 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 find 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.
"Accept, monsieur le comte, etc."
I had given balls 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 had no glimmer of the nature
of the entertainments in Rome: they have something of ancient poetry,
which places death by the side of pleasures. At the Villa Medicis,
where I received the Grand-duchess Helen, the gardens 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 the spectator,
the whole of Rome, like an old, abandoned eagle's nest. Amid the
groves thronged, together with the descendants of the Paulas and
Corinnas, beauties come from Naples, Florence and Milan: the Princess
Helen seemed to be their queen. Boreas, suddenly descending from the
mountain, tore the banqueting-tent and fled with shreds of canvas
and garlands, as though to 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 groups
disporting amid the squalls, the women whose tortured veils beat their
hair and faces, the _saltarello_ which continued during the storm,
the _improvisatrice_ declaiming to the clouds, the balloon escaping
crooked-wise with the cypher of the Daughter of the North: all this
gave a new character to those sports in which the customary tempests 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 and the
storm! It is difficult indeed for me to remember my autumn when,
at my receptions, I see pass before me those women of spring-time
who penetrate among the flowers, the concerts and the lights of my
successive galleries: as who should sway swans swimming towards radiant
climes. To what _désennui_ are they going? Some seek what they already
love, others what they do not yet love. At the end of the road,
they will fall into those sepulchres, 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 savannahs of the Floridas, the moan which I heard in
the Temple of Erechtheus at Athens? Is it the distant wailing of the
north winds, which rocked me on the ocean? Could my sylph be hidden
beneath the form of some of these brilliant Italian women? No: my
hamadryad has remained united to the willow of the meadows where I used
to talk with her on the further side of the hedge at Combourg. I have
little in common with these frolics 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 Coliseum. 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.
[Sidenote: The exiled Bonapartes.]
I will now set forth here my relations, as Ambassador, with the
Bonaparte Family, in order to clear the Restoration of one of the
calumnies that are incessantly being 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 pronounce the exile of the Bonapartes,
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 la Comtesse de Survilliers[77], then in Brussels, to enable
her to come to Paris to nurse one of her kinsmen, who was ill. Twenty
times over I called for the repeal of those laws of persecution; twenty
times over I told Louis XVIII. that I should like to see the Duc de
Reichstadt captain of his Guards, and the statue of Napoleon put back
on the top of the column in the Place Vendôme. 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 authorized
my secretaries and attachés to appear in the palace of Madame la
Duchesse de Saint-Leu; I threw down the barrier raised between
Frenchmen who had all known adversity. I wrote to M. le Cardinal Fesch
to invite him to join the cardinals who were to meet at my house; I
expressed to him my sorrow at 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:
[Sidenote: Fesch, Jerome Bonaparte.]
"PALAZZO FALCONIERI, 4 _April_ 1829.
"Cardinal Fesch greatly appreciates M. de 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
tranquillity; 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 Fesch begs M. de 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, etc.,
"CARDINAL FESCH."
The phrase, "the amenities of the moment are no safeguard against
unpleasantness in the future," is an allusion to the threat uttered
by M. de Blacas, who had given orders for M. le Cardinal Fesch to be
flung down his stairs if he presented himself at the French Embassy:
M. de Blacas 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, am constantly recalling my past, have
acted differently with His Eminence the Archbishop of Lyons: the little
misunderstandings that existed between him and me in Rome oblige me
to adopt a tone of propriety the more respectful inasmuch as I, in my
turn, belong to the triumphant and he to the beaten party.
Prince Jerome, 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 Jerome's], that France which possesses all his affections
and 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 Jérôme de Montfort, 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.
"JÉRÔME."
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 Jérôme de Montfort appearing to
the undersigned to be founded on justice and reason, he could
not refuse the applicant the intervention of his good offices,
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 undersigned would set an especial value upon obtaining, in
this circumstance, the powerful interest of H. E. the Cardinal
Secretary of State.
"CHATEAUBRIAND."
At the same time I replied to Prince Jerome as follows:
"ROME, 9 _May_ 1829.
"The French Ambassador to the Holy See has received the copy of the
note which Prince Jérôme de Montfort 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 Highness' just
claims.
"The Vicomte 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, addressing himself
to an Emigrant formerly struck off the list of outlaws by Napoleon
himself, is one of those freaks of fortune which must needs have
the ruins of Rome for witnesses.
"The Vicomte de Chateaubriand has the honour, etc."
DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS
"ROME, 4 _May_ 1829.
"I have had the honour to inform you, in my letter of 30 April,
acknowledging the receipt of your Dispatch No. 25, that the Pope
received me in private audience on the 29th of April at mid-day.
His 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, monsieur le comte, that Cardinal Albani is sincere. He
is profoundly indifferent in religious matters; he is not a priest;
he has even thought of giving up the purple and marrying; he does
not like the Jesuits, who tire him with the noise they make; he
is lazy, a glutton, a great lover of all kinds of pleasures; the
weariness which bishops' charges and pastoral letters produce in
him makes him extremely unfavourable to the cause 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."
[Sidenote: Monte Cavallo.]
I often visit Monte Cavallo; there the solitude of the gardens is
increased by the solitude of the Roman Campagna, in search of which
one's eyes turn beyond Rome and up the right bank of the Tiber. The
gardeners are my friends; there are walks leading to the Panatteria, a
poor dairy-farm, aviary, or poultry-yard, the occupants of which are as
indigent and peaceful as the latter-day popes. Looking down from the
height of the terraces of the Quirinal enclosure, one sees a narrow
street in which women sit working at their windows on the different
storeys: 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 master-pieces were ordered of
Raphael, when at the same time the Kings came to kiss the Pontiffs
slipper, there was something worthy of attention in the Temporal
Papacy. I would gladly see the cell of a Gregory VII.[78], of a Sixtus
V., just as I would look for the lions' den in Babylon; but dark holes,
deserted by an obscure company of septuagenarians, represent to me only
those _columbaria_ of Ancient Rome, which are empty to-day 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[79] for which one finds no precedent except by going back to
Sciarra Colonna[80], Nogaret[81] and Boniface VIII.[82]