21 The crisis in the Eastern question, the attitude of the Holy Father
on the occasion of Victor Emmanuel’s sudden demise, the consequent
devolution of the crown to a new sovereign, the scandal of the Prime
Minister’s (Orispi’s) notorious criminality before the law
necessitating his unwilling resignation and the fall of the
ministry, the suddenness of the Holy Father’s decease; all these
events and conditions, in their several degrees and kinds, made the
moment at which it had to meet astonishingly propitious for the
holding of the Conclave in the Vatican itself.