These precious globules, which no microscope will ever be powerful enough to detect, but which the intelligent observer sees with the naked eye, are rare enough in Europe, and I am not aware of their existence out of it. A small collection of them might be brought together in France, in Spain, in England, in Russia, in Germany, in Italy. Rome is one of the cities in which the fewest would be found. And yet the Roman nobility is surrounded with a certain prestige.

Thirty-one princes or dukes; a great number of marquises, counts, barons, and knights; a multitude of noble families without titles, sixty of whom were inscribed in the Capitol by Benedict XIV.; a vast extent of signiorial domains; a thousand palaces; a hundred picture-galleries, large and small; a considerable revenue; a prodigal display of horses, carriages, servants, and armorial bearings; some almost royal entertainments in the course of every winter; the remains of feudal privileges; and the respect of the lower orders: such are the more remarkable features which distinguish the Roman nobility, and expose it to the admiration of all the travelling cockneys of the universe.

Ignorance, idleness, vanity, servility, and above all incapacity; these are the pet vices which place it below all the aristocracies in Europe. Should I meet with any exceptions on my road, I shall consider it my duty to point them out.

The roots of the Roman nobility are very diverse. The Orsini and the Colonna families descend from the heroes or brigands of the Middle Ages. That of Caetani dates from 730. The houses of Massimo, Santa-Croce, and Muti, go back to Livy in search of their founders. Prince Massimo bears in his shield the trace of the marchings and counter-marchings of Fabius Maximus, otherwise called Cunctator. His motto is, Cunctando restituit. Santa-Croce boasts of being an offshoot of Valerius Publicola. The Muti family counts Mutius Scaevola among its ancestors. This nobility, whether authentic or not, is at all events very ancient, and is of independent origin. It has not been hatched under the robes of the Popes.

The second category is of Pontifical origin. Its titles and fortunes have their origin in nepotism. In the course of the seventeenth century, Paul V., Urban VIII.; Innocent X., Alexander VII., Clement IX., and Innocent XI. created the houses of Borghese, Barberini, Pamphili, Chigi, Rospigliosi, and Odescalchi. They vied with one another in aggrandising their humble families. The domains of the Borghese house, which make a tolerably large spot on the map of Europe, testify that Paul V. was by no means an unnatural uncle. The Popes have kept up the practice of ennobling their relations, but the scandal of their liberalities ceases with Pius VI., another of the Braschi family (1775-1800).

The last batch includes the bankers, such as Torlonia and Kuspoli, monopolists like Antonelli, millers like the Macchi, bakers like the Dukes Grazioli, tobacconists like the Marchese Ferraiuoli, and farmers like the Marchese Calabrini.

I add, by way of memorandum, strangers, noble or not, as may be, who purchase an estate, get a title thrown into the bargain. A short time ago a French petty country gentleman, who had a little money, woke up a Roman Prince one fine morning, the equal of the Dorias, Torlonias, and of the baker Duke Grazioli.

For they are all equal from the hour when the Holy Father has signed their parchments. Whatever be the origin of their nobility and the antiquity of their houses, they go arm in arm, without any disputes as to precedence. The names of Orsini, Colonna, and Sforza, are jumbled together in the family of a former domestique de place. The son of a baker marries the daughter of a Lante de La Rovere, granddaughter of a Prince Colonna, and a Princess of Savoie-Carignan. There is no fear that the famous quarrel of the princes and dukes, which so roused the indignation of our stately St. Simon, will ever be repeated among the Roman aristocracy.

To what purpose should it be, gracious Heavens! Don't they well know—dukes and princes—that they are all alike inferior to the shabbiest of the cardinals? The day that a Capuchin receives the red hat, he acquires the right to splash the mud in their faces as he rides past in his gilded coach.

In all monarchical States, the king is the natural head of the nobility. The strongest term that a gentleman can make use of, in alluding to his house, is that it is as noble as the King. As noble as the Pope would be simply ludicrous, since a swineherd, the son of a swineherd, may be elected Pope, and receive the oath of fidelity from all the Roman princes. They may well then consider themselves upon an equality among themselves, these poor grandees, seeing that they are equally looked down upon by a few priests.

They console themselves with the thought that they are superior to all the laymen in the world. This soothing vanity, neither noisy nor insolent, but none the less firmly rooted in their hearts, enables them to swallow the daily affront of conscious inferiority.

I am quite aware of the points in which they are inferior to the upstarts of the Church, but their affected superiority to other men is less evident to me.

As to their courage. Some years have elapsed since they had the opportunity of proving it on the field of battle.[4]

Heaven forbids duelling. The Government inculcates the gentler virtues.

They are not wanting in a certain ostentatious and theatrical liberality. A Piombino sent his ambassador to the conference at Vienna, allowing L4,000 for the expenses of the mission. A Borghese gave the mob of Rome a banquet that cost L48,000, to celebrate the return of Pius VII. Almost all the Roman princes open their palaces, villas, and galleries to the public. To be sure, old Sciarra used to sell permission to copy his pictures, but he was a notorious miser, and has found no imitators.

They practise generally the virtue of charity, in a somewhat indiscriminate manner, from the love of patronage, from pride, habit, and weakness, because they are ashamed to refuse. They are by no means badly disposed, they are good—I stop at this word, lest I should go too far.

They are not wanting in sense or intelligence. Prince Massimo is quoted for his good sense, and the two Caetani for their puns. Santa-Croce, though a little cracked, is no ordinary man. But what a wretched education the Government gives them! When they are not the children, they are the pupils of priests, whose system principally consists in teaching them nothing. Get hold of a student of St. Sulpice, wash him tolerably clean, have him dressed by Alfred or Poole, and bejewelled by Castellani or Hunt and Roskel, let him learn to thrum a guitar, and sit upon a horse, and you'll have a Roman prince as good as the best of them.

You probably think it natural that people brought up at Rome, in the midst of the finest works of art in the world, should take a little interest in art, and know something about it. Pray be undeceived. This man has never entered the Vatican except to pay visits; that one knows nothing of his own gallery, but through the report of his house-steward. Another had never visited the Catacombs till he became Pope. They profess an elegant ignorance, which they think in good taste, and which will always be fashionable in a Catholic country.

I have said enough about the heart, mind, and education of the Roman nobility. A few words as to the fortunes of which they dispose.

I have before me a list which I believe to be authentic, as I copied it myself in a sure quarter. It comprises the net available incomes of the principal Roman families. I extract the most important:—

Corsini ....... L20,000 Borghese....... 18,000 Ludovisi....... 14,000 Grazioli....... 14,000 Doria.......... 13,000 Rospigliosi.... 10,000 Colonna........ 8,000 Odescalchi..... 8,000 Massimo........ 8,000 Patrizi........ 6,000 Orsini......... 4,000 Strozzi........ 4,000 Torlonia....... Unlimited. Antonelli....... Ditto.

It is not to be supposed that Grazioli, for instance, has himself alone nearly as large a gross income as Prince Borghese and his two brothers Aldobrandini and Salviati together. But the fact is that all the more ancient families are burdened with heavy hereditary charges, which enormously reduce their incomes. They are obliged to keep up chapels, churches, hospitals, and whole chapters of fat canons, while the nobles of yesterday are not called upon to pay for either the fame or the sins of their ancestors.

At all events the foregoing list proves the mediocrity as to wealth, as in everything else, of the Roman nobility. Not only are they unable to compete with the hard-working middle classes of London, Bale, or Amsterdam, but they are infinitely less wealthy than the nobility of Russia or of England.

Is this because, as with us in France, an equitable law is constantly subdividing large properties? No. The law of primogeniture is in full vigour in the kingdom of the Pope, like every other abuse of the good old times. They provide for their younger sons as they can, and for their daughters as they please. It is not parental justice that ruins families. I have even heard it said that the elder brother is not obliged to put on mourning when the younger dies; which is a clear saving of so much black cloth.

This being the case, why are not the Roman princes richer than they are? It is to be accounted for by two excellent reasons,—the love of show, and bad management.

Ostentation, the Roman disease, requires that every nobleman should have a palace in the city, and a palace in the country: carriages, horses, lacqueys and liveries. They can do without mattresses, linen, and armchairs, but a gallery of pictures is indispensable. It is not thought necessary to have a decent dinner every Sunday, but it is to have a terraced garden for the admiration of foreigners. These imaginary wants swallow up the income, and not unfrequently eat into the capital.

And yet I could point out half-a-dozen estates which could suffice for the prodigalities of a sovereign, if they were managed in the English, or even in the French fashion,—if the owner were to interfere personally, and see with his own eyes, instead of allowing a host of middlemen to come between him and his property, who of course enrich themselves at his expense.

Not that the Roman princes knowingly allow their affairs to go to ruin. They must by no means be confounded with the grands seigneurs of old France, who laughed over the wreck of their fortunes, and avenged themselves upon a steward by a bon mot and a kick. The Roman prince has an office, with shelves, desks, and clerks, and devotes some hours a day to business, examining accounts, poring over parchments, and signing papers. But being at once incapable and uneducated, his zeal serves but to liberate the rogues about him from responsibility. I heard of a nobleman who had inherited an enormous fortune, who condemned himself to the labor of a clerk at L50 a year, who remained faithful to his desk even to extreme old age, and who, thanks to some blunder or other in management, died insolvent.

Pity them if you please, but cast not the stone at them. They are such as education has made them. Look at those brats of various ages from six to ten, walking along the Corso in double file, between a couple of Jesuits. They are embryo Roman nobles. Handsome as little Cupids, in spite of their black coats and white neckcloths, they will all grow up alike, under the shadow of their pedagogue's broad-brimmed hat.

Already are their minds like a well-raked garden, from which ideas have been carefully rooted out. Their hearts are purged alike of good and evil passions. Poor little wretches, they will not even have any vices.

As soon as they shall have passed their last examinations, and obtained their diplomas of ignorance, they will be dressed in the latest London fashions, and be turned out into the public promenades. They will pace for ever the pavement of the Corso, they will wear out the alleys of the Pincian Hill, the Villa Borghese, and the Villa Pamphili. They will ride, drive, and walk about, armed with a whip, eye-glass, or cane, as may be, until they are made to marry. Regular at Mass, assiduous at the theatre, you may see them smile, gape, applaud, make the sign of the cross, with an equal absence of emotion. They are almost all inscribed on the list of some religious fraternity or other. They belong to no club, play timidly, rarely make a parade of social irregularities, drink without enthusiasm, and never ruin themselves by horse-racing. In short, their general conduct is beyond all praise; and the life of dolls made to say "Papa!" and "Mama!" is equally irreproachable.

One fine day they attain their twenty-fifth year. At this age, an American has already tried his hand at a dozen trades, made four fortunes, and at least one bankruptcy, has gone through a couple of campaigns, had a lawsuit, established a new religious sect, killed half-a-dozen men with his revolver, freed a negress, and conquered an island. An Englishman has passed some stiff examinations, been attached to an embassy, founded a factory, converted a Catholic, gone round the world, and read the complete works of Walter Scott. A Frenchman has rhymed a tragedy, written for two newspapers, been wounded in three duels, twice attempted suicide, vexed fourteen husbands, and changed his politics nineteen times. A German has slashed fifteen of his dearest friends, swallowed sixty hogsheads of beer and the Philosophy of Hegel, sung eleven thousand couplets, compromised a tavern waiting-maid, smoked a million of pipes, and been mixed up with, at least, two revolutions.

The Roman prince has done nothing, seen nothing, learnt nothing, loved nothing, suffered nothing. His parents or guardians open a cloister gate, take out a young girl as inexperienced as himself, and the pair of innocents are bidden to kneel before a priest, who gives them permission to become parents of another generation of innocents like themselves.

Probably you expect to find them living unhappily together. Not at all. And yet the wife is pretty. The monotonous routine of her convent education has not so frozen her heart that she is incapable of loving; her uncultivated mind will spontaneously develope itself when it comes in contact with the world. She will not fail, ere long, to discover the inferiority of her husband. The more her education has been neglected, the greater is her chance of remaining womanly, that is to say, intelligent, tender, and charming. In truth, the harmony of their household is less likely to be disturbed at Rome than it would be at Paris or Vienna.

Yes, the huge extinguisher which Heaven holds suspended over the city of Rome, stifles even the subtle spark of passion. If Vesuvius were here, it would have been cold for the last forty years. The Roman princesses were not a little talked of up to the end of the thirteenth century. Under the French rule their gallantry assumed a military complexion. They used to go and see their admirers play billiards at the Cafe Nuovo. But hypocrisy and morality have made immense progress since the restoration. The few who have afforded matter for the scandalous chronicles of Rome are sexagenarians, and their adventures are inscribed on the tablets of history, between Austerlitz and Waterloo.

The young princess whom we have just seen entering upon her married life, will begin by presenting her husband with sundry little princes and princesses; and there is no rampart against illicit affection like your row of little cradles.

In five or six years, when she might have leisure for evil thoughts, she will be bound hand and foot by the exigencies of society. You shall have a specimen of the mode in which she spends her days during the winter season. Her morning is devoted to dressing, breakfasting, her children, and her husband. From one to three she returns the visits she has received, in the exact form in which they were paid to her. The first act of politeness is to go and see your acquaintance; the second, to leave your card in person; the third, to send the same bit of pasteboard by a servant ad hoc. At three, all the world drives to the Villa Borghese, where there is a general salutation of acquaintances with the tips of the fingers. At four, up the Pincio. At five, it files backwards and forwards along the Corso. Everybody who is anybody is condemned to this triple promenade. If a single woman—who is anybody—were to absent herself, it would be inferred, as a matter of course, that she was ill, and a general inquiry as to the nature of her complaint would be instituted.

At close of day all go home. After dinner another toilette, and out for the evening. Every house has its particular reception-night. And a pure and simple reception indeed it is, without play, without music, without conversation; a mere interchange of bows and curtsies, and cold commonplaces. At rare intervals a ball breaks the ice, and shakes off the ennui generated by this system. Poor women! In an existence at once so busy and so void, there is not even room for friendship. Two who may have been friends from childhood, brought up in the same convent, married into the same world, may meet one another daily and at all hours, and yet may not be able to enjoy ten minutes of intimate conversation in the whole year. The brightest, the best, is known but by her name, her title, and her fortune. Judgments are passed on her beauty, her toilet, and her diamonds, but nobody has the opportunity or the leisure to penetrate into the depths of her mind. A really distinguished woman once said to me, "I feel that I become stupid when I enter these drawing-rooms. Vacancy seizes me at the very threshold." Another, who had lived in France, regretted, with tears, the absence of those charming friendships, so cheerful and so cordial, that exist between the young married women of Paris.

When the Carnival arrives, it mingles everything without uniting anything. In truth, one is never more solitary than in the midst of noise and crowds. Then comes Lent; and then the grand comedy of Easter; and after that the family departs for the country, which means, economizing for some months in a huge half-furnished mansion. In short, the romance of a Roman Princess is made up of a certain number of noisy winters, and dull summers, and plenty of children. If there be, by chance, any more exciting chapters, they are doubtless known to the confessor.

"Ce ne sont pas la mes affaires."

You must go far from Rome to find any real nobility. Here and there in the Mediterranean provinces some fallen family may be met with, living poorly upon the produce of a small estate, and still looked up to with a certain respect by its wealthier neighbours. The lower orders respect it because it has been something once, and even because it is nothing under the present hated government. These little provincial aristocrats, ignorant, simple, and proud, are a sort of relic of the Middle Ages left behind in the middle of the nineteenth century. I only mention them to recall the fact of their existence.

But if you will accompany me over the Apennines, into the glorious cities of the Romagna, I can show you more than one nobleman of great name and ancient lineage, who cultivates at once his lands and his intellect; who knows all that we know; who believes all that we believe, and nothing more; who takes an active interest in the misfortunes of Italy, and who, looking to free and happy Europe, hopes, through the sympathy of nations and the justice of sovereigns, to obtain the deliverance of his country. I met in certain palaces at Bologna a brilliant writer, applauded on every stage in Italy; a learned economist, quoted in the most serious reviews throughout Europe; a controversialist, dreaded by the priests; and all these individualities united in the single person of a Marquis of thirty-four, who may, perhaps, one of these days play an important part in the Italian revolution.



CHAPTER VIII.

FOREIGNERS.

Permit me to open this chapter by recalling some recollections of the golden age.

A century or two ago, when old aristocracies, old royalties, and old religions imagined themselves eternal; when Popes innocently assured the fortunes of their nephews, and the welfare of their mistresses; when the simplicity of Catholic countries regilt annually the pontifical idol; when Europe contained some half-million of individuals who deemed themselves created for mutual understanding and amusement, without any thought of the classes beneath them, Rome was the Paradise of foreigners, and foreigners were the Providence of Rome.

A gentleman of birth took it into his head to visit Italy, for the sake of kissing the Pope's toe, and perhaps other local curiosities. He managed to have a couple of years of leisure,—put three letters of introduction into one pocket, and 50,000 crowns into the other, and stepped into his travelling carriage.

In those days people did not go to Rome to spend a week there and away again; for it was a month or two's journey from France. The crack of the postilions' whips used to announce to the Eternal City in general the arrival of a distinguished guest. Domestiques de place flocked to the call. The luckiest of them took possession of the new comer by entering his service. In a few days he provided his master with a palace, furniture, footmen, carriages, and horses. The foreigner settled himself comfortably, and then presented his letters of introduction. His credentials being examined, the best society at once opened its arms to him, and cried, "You are one of us!" From that moment he was at home wherever he went. He was a guest at every house. He danced, supped, played, and made love to the ladies. And of course, in his turn, he opened his own palace to his liberal entertainers, adding a new feature to the brilliancy of a Roman winter.

No foreigner failed to carry away with him some recollection of a city so fertile in marvels. One bought pictures, another ancient marbles, this one medals, that one books. The trade of Rome prospered by this circulation of foreign money.

The heats of summer drove away foreigners as well as natives; but they never went far. Naples, Florence, or Venice offered them agreeable quarters till the return of the winter season. And they had excellent reasons for returning to Rome, which is the only city in the world in which one has never seen everything. Some of them so entirely forgot their own countries, that death overtook them between the Piazza del Popolo and the Piazza de Venizia. If any exiled themselves to their native land, they did it in sheer self-defence, when their pockets were empty. Rome bade them a tender adieu, piously keeping their likeness in its memory and their money in its coffers.

The Revolution of 1793 somewhat disturbed this agreeable order of things; but it was a mere storm between two fine summer days. Neither the Roman aristocracy, nor its constant troop of guests, took this brutal overthrow of their elegant pleasures in earnest. The exile of the Pope, the French occupation, and many similar accidents, were supported with a noble resignation, and forgotten with the readiness of good taste. 1815 passed a sponge over some years of very foul history. All the inscriptions which recalled the glory or the beneficence of France were conscientiously erased. It was even proposed to do away with the lighting of the streets, not only because they threw too strong a light upon certain nocturnal matters, but because they dated from the time of Miollis and De Tournon. Even now, in 1859, the fleur-de-lis points out what is French property. A marble table in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi promises indulgence to those who will pray for the king of France. The French convent of the Trinita dei Monti—that worthy claustral establishment which sold us the picture of Daniel di Volterra and then took it back—possesses the portraits of all the kings of France, from Pharamond to Charles X. There you see Louis XVII. between Louis XVI. and Louis XVIII.; but in this historical gallery there is no more mention of Napoleon or of Louis-Philippe, than of Nana-Sahib or Marat.

A city so respectful to the past, so faithful to the worship of bygone recollections, is the natural asylum of sovereigns fallen from their thrones. It is to Rome that they come to foment their contusions, and to heal the wounds of their pride. They live there agreeably, surrounded by the few followers who have remained faithful to them. A miniature court, assembled in their antechamber, crowns them in private, hails them on rising with epithets of royalty, and pours forth incense in their dressing-room. The Roman nobility, and foreigners of distinction, live with them in an unequal intimacy, humbling themselves in order that they may be raised; and sowing a great deal of veneration to reap a very light crop of familiarity. The Pope and his Cardinals, upon principle, are lavish of attentions which they would perhaps refuse them on the throne. In short, the king who has been the most battered and shaken by his fall, and the most ill-used by his ungrateful subjects, has but to take refuge in Rome, and by the double aid of a vivid imagination and a well-filled purse, he may persuade himself that he is still reigning over an absent people.

The reverses of royalty which ended the eighteenth and commenced the nineteenth centuries, sent to Rome a colony of crowned heads. The modifications which European society has undergone have more recently brought many less illustrious guests, not even members of the aristocracy of their own country. It is certain that for the last fifty years, wealth, education, and talent have shared the rights formerly belonging to birth alone. Rome has seen foreigners arriving in travelling carriages who were not born great,—distinguished artists, eminent writers, diplomatists sprung from the people, tradesmen elevated to the rank of capitalists, men of the world who are in their place everywhere, because everywhere they know how to live. The best society did not receive them without submitting them to careful inquiry, in order to ascertain that they brought no dangerous doctrines; and then it seemed to say to them: "You cannot be our relations—be our masonic brothers!"

I have said that the Roman princes are, if not without pride, at least without arrogance. This observation extends to the princes of the Church. They welcome a foreigner of modest condition, provided he speaks and thinks like themselves upon two or three capital questions, has a profound veneration for certain time-honoured lumber, and curses heartly certain innovations. You must show them the white paw of the fable, if you wish them to open their doors to you.

On this point they are immovable. They will not listen to rank, to fortune, or even to the most imperious political necessities. If France were to send them an ambassador who failed to show them the white paw, the ambassador of France would not get inside the doors of the aristocratic salons. If Horace Vernet were named director of the Academy, neither his name nor his office would open to him certain houses where he was received as a friend previously to 1830. And why? Because Horace Vernet was one of the public men of the Revolution of July.

Do not imagine, however, that paying respect to Cardinals involves paying respect to religion, or that it is necessary to attend Mass in order to get invited to balls. What is absolutely indispensable is, to believe that everything at Rome is good, to regard the Papacy as an arch, the Cardinals as so many saints, abuses as principles, and to applaud the march of the Government, even though it stand still. It is considered good taste to praise the virtues of the lower orders, their simple faith, and their indifference as to political affairs, and to despise that middle-class which is destined to bring about the next revolution.

I conversed much with some of the foreigners who live in Rome, and who mix with its best society. One of the most distinguished and the most agreeable of them often gave me advice which, though I have not followed, I have not forgotten.

"My dear friend," he used to say,

"I know but two ways of writing about Rome. You must choose for yourself. If you declaim against the priestly government, its abuses, vices, and injustice; against the assassinations, the uncultivated lands, the bad air, the filthiness of the streets; against the many scandals, the hypocrisies, the robberies, the lotteries, the Ghetto, and all that follows as a matter of course, you will earn the somewhat barren honour of having added the thousand and first pamphlet to those which have appeared since the time of Luther. All has been said that can be said against the Popes. A man who pretends to originality should not lend his voice to the chorus of brawling reformers. Remember, too, that the Government of this country, though very mild and very paternal, never forgives! Even if it wished to do so, it cannot. It must defend its principle, which is sacred. Don't close the gates of Rome against yourself. You will be so glad to revisit it, and we shall be so happy to receive you again! If you wish to support a new and original theme, and to gain fame which will not be wholly unprofitable, dare to declare boldly that everything is good—even that which all agree to pronounce bad. Praise without restriction an order of things which has been solidly maintained for eighteen centuries. Prove that everything here is firmly established, and that the network of pontifical institutions is linked together by a powerful logic. Bravely resist those aspirations after reform which may haply urge you to demand such and such changes. Remember that you cannot disturb old constitutions with impunity; that the displacement of a single stone may bring down the whole edifice. How do you know, that the particular abuse which most offends you is not absolutely necessary to the very existence of Rome? Good and evil mixed together form a cement more durable than the elaborately selected materials of which modern utopias are made. I who tell you this have been here many years, and am quite comfortable and contented. Whither should I go if Rome were to be turned topsy-turvy? Where should we establish our dethroned sovereigns? Where would a home be found for Roman Catholic worship? You have no doubt been told that some people are dissatisfied with the administration: but what of that? They are not of our world. You never meet them in the good society you frequent. If the demands of the middle class were to be complied with, everything would be overturned. Have you any wish to see manufactories erected round St. Peter's and turnip fields about the fountain of Egeria? These native shopkeepers seem to imagine the country belongs to them because they happen to be born in it. Can one conceive a more ridiculous pretension? Let them know that Rome is the property in copartnership of people of birth, of people of taste, and of artists. It is a museum confided to the guardianship of the Holy Father; a museum of old monuments, old pictures, and old institutions. Let all the rest of the world change, but build me a Chinese wall round the Papal States, and never let the sound of the railway-whistle be heard within its sacred precincts! Let us preserve for admiring posterity at least one magnificent specimen of absolute power, ancient art, and the Roman Catholic religion!"

This is the language of foreign inhabitants of Rome of the old stamp,—estimable people, and sincere believers, who have gone on year after year witnessing the ceremonies of St. Peter's, and the Fete des Oignons in the St. John Lateran, till they have acquired an ecclesiastical turn of thought and expression, a habit of seeing things through the spectacles of the Sacred College, and a faith which has no sympathy with the outer world. I do not share their opinions, and I have never found their advice particularly useful; but they interest me, I like them, and I sincerely pity them. Who can tell what events they are destined to witness in their time? Who can foresee the spectacles which the future reserves for them, and the changes that their habits will be made to undergo by the Italian revolution? Already their hearing is distracted by the locomotives that rush between Rome and Frascati; already the shriek of the steam-blast daily and nightly hisses insolently at the respectable comedy of the past between Rome and Civita Vecchia. Steamboats, another engine of disorder, furnish the bi-weekly means of an invasion of the most dangerous character. Those dozens of travellers who throng the streets and the squares are about as much like our good old foreign tourists, as the barbarians of Attila were like the worthy Spaniard who came to Rome on purpose to see Titus Livius.

Examine them carefully; they are of every possible condition; for now that travelling costs next to nothing, everybody is able to afford himself a sight of Rome. Briefless barristers, physicians without practice, office-clerks, poor students, apprentices, and shop-boys drop down like hail on the Eternal City, for the sake of saying that they have taken the Communion in it. The Holy Week brings every year a swarm of these locusts. Their entire impedimenta consist of a carpet-bag and an umbrella, and of course they put up at a hotel. In fact hotels have been built on purpose to receive them. When everybody hired houses, there was no need of hotels. The 'Minerva' is the type of the modern Roman caravansary. Your bed is charged half-a-crown per night; you dine in a refectory with a traveller at each elbow. The character of the travelling class which invades Rome about Easter is illustrated by the conversation which you hear going on around you at the table d'hote of the 'Minerva.' The following is a specimen:—

One says triumphantly, "I have done two museums, three galleries, and four ruins, to-day."

"I stuck to the churches," says another, "I had floored seventeen by one o'clock."

"The deuce you had! You keep the game alive."

"Yes, I want to have a whole day left for the suburbs."

"Oh, burn the suburbs! I've got no time to see them."

If I have a day to spare, I must devote it to buying chaplets."[5]

"I suppose you've seen the Villa Borghese?"

"Oh yes, I consider that in the city, although it is in fact outside the walls."

"How much did they charge you for going over it?"

"A paul."

"I paid two—I've been robbed."

"As for that, they're all robbers."

"You're right, but the sight of Rome is worth all it costs."

Shades of the travellers of the olden time—delicate, subtle, genial spirits—what think you of conversations such as this? Surely you must opine that your footmen knew Rome better, and talked more to the purpose about it.

Across the table I hear a citizen of London town narrating to a curious audience how he has to-day seen the two great lions of Rome,—the Coliseum, and Cardinal Antonelli. The conclusion he arrives at is, that the first is a very fine ruin, and the second a very clever man.

A provincial dowager of the devotee class, is worth listening to. She has toiled through the entire ceremonies of the Holy Week. She has knelt close to the Pope, and declares his mode of giving the Benediction the most sublime thing on earth. The good lady has spared neither time nor money in order to carry home a choice collection of relics. Among other objects of adoration she has a bone of St. Perpetua, and a real bit of the real Cross. Not satisfied with these, she is bent on obtaining the Pope's palm-branch, the very identical palm-branch which his Holiness has carried in his own sacred hand. This is with her a fixed idea, a positive question of salvation. The poor old soul has not the smallest doubt, that this bit of stick will open for her the gates of Paradise. She has made her request to a priest, who will transmit it to a Monsignore, who will forward it to a Cardinal. Her importunity and her simplicity will, doubtless, move somebody. She will get the precious bough, and she is convinced that when she arrives at home with it, all the devotees in the province will burst with envy.

Among these batches of ridiculous travellers, you are certain to find some ecclesiastics. Here is one from our own country. You have known him in France. Does not he strike you as being somewhat changed? Not in his looks, but his manner. Beneath the shadow of his own church tower, in the midst of his own flock, he used to be the mildest, the meekest, and most modest of parish priests. He bowed low to the Mayor, and to the most microscopic of the authorities. At Rome, his hat seems glued to his head. I almost think—Heaven forgive me!—it is a trifle cocked. How jauntily his cassock is tucked up! How he struts along the street! Is not his hand on his hip? Something very like it. The reason of this change is as clear as the sun at noon. He is in a kingdom governed by his own class. He inhales an atmosphere impregnated with clerical pride and theocratic omnipotence. Phiz! It is a bottle of champagne saluting him with the cork. By the time he has drunk all the contents of the intoxicating beverage, he will begin to mutter between his teeth that the French clergy does not get its deserts, and that we are a long time in restoring to it the property taken away by the Revolution.

I actually heard this argument maintained on board the steamer which brought me back to France. The principal passengers were Prince Souworf, Governor of the province of Riga, one of the most distinguished men in Europe; M. de la Rochefoucauld, attached to the French embassy; M. de Angelis, a highly educated and really distinguished mercante di campagna; M. Oudry, engineer of the Civita Vecchia railway: and a French ecclesiastic of a respectable age and corpulence. This reverend personage, who was nowise disinclined to argumentation, and who had just left a country where the priests are never wrong, took to holding-forth after dinner upon the merits of the Pontifical Government. I answered as well as I could, like a man unaccustomed to public speaking. Driven to my last entrenchments, and called upon to relate some fact which should not redound to the Pope's credit, I chose, at hazard, a recent event then known to all Rome, as it was speedily about to be to all Europe. My honourable interlocutor met my statement with the most unqualified, formal, and unhesitating denial. He accused me of impudently calumniating an innocent administration, and of propagating lies fabricated by the enemies of religion. His language was so sublimely authoritative, that I felt confounded, overpowered, crushed, and, for a moment, I asked myself whether I had not really been telling a lie.

The story I had related was that of the boy Mortara.

But I return to Rome and our travellers in the trumpery line. Those we overheard before are already gone. But their places have been quickly filled. They follow one another, like vapours rising from the ocean, and they are as much like one another as one sea-wave is to its predecessor. See them laying-in their stocks of Roman souvenirs at the shops in the Corso and the Via Condotti. Their selections are principally from the cheap rosaries, coarse mosaics, and gilt jewellery, and generally those articles of which a lot may be had for a crown-piece. They care little for what is really good in its way; all they want is something which can be bought nowhere but at Rome, and which will serve to their descendants as the evidence of their visit to the Eternal City. They haggle as if they were at market, and yet, when they get back to the 'Minerva,' they wonder they have so little to show for their money.

If they took home nothing worse than their cheap rosaries, I should not find fault with them; but they carry opinions and impressions. Don't tell them of the abuses which swarm throughout the kingdom of the Pope. They will bridle up, and answer that for their parts they never saw a single one. As the surface of things is smooth, at least in the best quarter of the town—the only quarter these good folks are likely to have seen—they assume, as a matter of course, that all is well. They have seen the Pope and the Cardinals in all their glory and all their innocence at the Sistine Chapel; and of course it is not on Easter Sunday, and in the eyes of the whole multitude, that Cardinal Antonelli occupies himself with his business or his pleasures. When Monsignore B—— dishonoured a young girl, who died of the outrage, and then sent her affianced bridegroom to the galleys, he did not select the Sistine Chapel as the theatre of his exploits.

You must not attempt to extract pity for the Italian nation from these foreign pilgrims of the Holy Week. The honest souls have marked the uncultivated waste which extends from Civita Vecchia to Rome, and they have at once inferred that the people are idle. They have been importuned for alms by miserable-looking objects in the streets, and they conclude that the lower class is a class of beggars.

The cicerone who took them about, whispered some significant words in their ears, and they are persuaded that every Italian is in the habit of offering his wife or his daughter to foreigners. You would astonish these profound observers immeasurably, if you were to tell them that the Pope has three millions of subjects who in no way resemble the Roman rabble.

Thus it happens that the flying visitor, the superficial traveller, the communicant of the Holy Week, the guest of the 'Minerva,' is a ready-made foe to the nation, a natural defender of the clerical government.

As for the permanent foreign visitors, if they be men enervated by the climate or by pleasure, indifferent to the fate of nations, strangers to political chicane, they will, in the natural order of events, become converted to the ideas of the Roman aristocracy, between a quadrille and a cup of chocolate.

If they be studious men, or men of action, sent for a specific object, charged to unravel certain mysteries, or to support certain principles, their conversion will be undertaken in due form.

I have seen officers, bold, frank, off-hand men, nowise suspected of Jesuitism, who have allowed themselves to be gently carried away into the by-paths of reaction by an invisible influence, until they have been heard swearing, like pagans, against the enemies of the Pope. Even our own generals, less easy to be caught, are sometimes laid hold of. The Government cajoles them without loving them.

No effort is spared to persuade them that all is for the best. The Roman princes, who think themselves superior to all men, treat them upon a footing of perfect equality. The Cardinals caress them. These men in petticoats possess marvellous seductions, and are irresistible in the art of wheedling. The Holy Father himself converses now with one, now with the other, and addresses each as "My dear General!" A soldier must be very ungrateful, very badly taught, and have fallen off sadly from the old French chivalry, if he refuses to let himself be killed at the gates of the Vatican where his vanity has been so charmingly tickled.

Our ambassadors, too, are resident foreigners, exposed to the personal flatteries of Roman society. Poor Count de Rayneval! He was so petted, and cajoled, and deceived, that he ended by penning the Note of the 14th of May, 1856.

His successor, the Duke de Gramont, is not only an accomplished gentleman, but a man of talent, with a highly cultivated mind. The Emperor sent him from Turin to Rome, so it was to be expected that the Pontifical Government would appear to him doubly detestable, first, from its own defects, and then by comparison with what he had just quitted. I had the honour of conversing with this brilliant young diplomatist, shortly after his arrival, when the Roman people expected a great deal of him. I found him opposed to the ideas of the Count de Rayneval, and very far from disposed to countersign the Note of the 14th of May. Nevertheless, he was beginning to judge the administration of the Cardinals, and the grievances of the people, with something more than diplomatic impartiality. If I were to express what appeared to be his opinion, in common parlance, I should say he would have put the governors and the governed in a bag together. I would wager that, three months afterwards, the bag would contain none but the governed, and that he would think it only fit to be flung into the water. Such is the influence of ecclesiastical cajoleries over even the most gifted minds.

What can the Romans hope from our diplomacy, when they see one of the most notorious lacqueys of the Pontifical coterie lording it at the French Embassy? The name of the upright man I allude to is Lasagni; his business is that of a consistorial advocate; we pay him for deceiving us. He is known for a Nero,—that is, a fanatical reactionist. The secretaries of the embassy despise him, and yet are familiar with him; tell him they know he is going to lie, and yet listen to what he says. He smirks, bends double, pockets his money and laughs at us in his sleeve. Verily, friend Lasagni, you are quite right! But I regret the eighteenth century—there were then such things as canes.



CHAPTER IX.

ABSOLUTE CHARACTER OF THE TEMPORAL POWER OF THE POPE.

The Counsellor de Brosses, who wished no harm to the Pope, wrote in 1740:—"The Papal Government, although in fact the worst in Europe, is at the same time the mildest."

The Count de Tournon, an honest man, an excellent economist, a Conservative as to all existing powers, and a judge rather too much prejudiced in favour of the Popes, said, in 1832:—

"From this concentration of the powers of pontiff, bishop, and sovereign, naturally arises the most absolute authority possible over temporal affairs; but the exercise of this authority, tempered by the usages and forms of government, is even still more so by the virtues of the Pontiffs who for many years have filled the chair of St. Peter; so that this most absolute of governments is exercised with extreme mildness. The Pope is an elective sovereign; his States are the patrimony of Catholicism, because they are the pledge of the independence of the chief of the faithful, and the reigning Pope is the supreme administrator, the guardian of this domain."

Finally, the Count de Rayneval, the latest and least felicitous apologist of the Papacy, made in 1856 the following admissions:—

"Not long ago the ancient traditions of the Court of Rome were faithfully observed. All modifications of established usages, all improvements, even material, were viewed with an evil eye, and seemed full of danger. Public affairs were exclusively managed by prelates. The higher posts in the State were by law interdicted to laymen. In practice the different powers were often confounded. The principle of pontifical infallibility was applied to administrative questions. The personal decision of the Sovereign had been known to reverse the decision of the tribunals, even in civil matters. The Cardinal Secretary of State, first minister in the fullest extent of the term, concentred in his own hands all the powers of the State. Under his supreme direction the different branches of the administration were confided to clerks rather than ministers. These neither formed a council, nor deliberated together upon the affairs of the State. The public finances were administered in the most profound secrecy. No information was communicated to the nation as to the mode in which its revenues were spent. Not only did the budget remain a mystery, but it was afterwards discovered that the accounts were frequently not made up and balanced. Lastly, municipal liberties, which are appreciated above all others by the Italians, and which more particularly respond to their real tendencies, had been submitted to the most restrictive measures. But from the day on which Pope Pius IX. ascended the throne" etc. etc.

Thus we find that the not long ago of the Count de Rayneval is an exact date. It means, in good French, "before the election of Pius IX.," or again, "up to the 16th of June, 1846."

Thus also M. de Brosses, if he could have returned to Rome in 1846, would have found there, by the admission of the Count de Rayneval himself, the worst government in Europe.

And thus the most absolute of governments, as M. de Tournon calls it, still existed in Rome in 1846.

Up to the 16th of June, 1846, Catholicity owned the six millions of acres of which the Roman territory consists; the Pope was the administrator, the guardian, the steward; and the citizens of the State seem to have been the ploughmen.

Up to this era of deliverance, a systematic despotism had deprived the subjects of the Pope, not only of all participation in public affairs, but of the simplest and most legitimate liberties, of the most innocuous progress, and even—I shudder as I write it—of recourse to the laws. The whim of one man had arbitrarily reversed the decisions of the courts of law. And lastly, an incapable and disorderly caste had wasted the public finances without rendering an account to any one, occasionally even without rendering it to themselves. All these statements must be believed, because it is the Count de Rayneval who makes them.

Before proceeding, I maintain that this state of things, now admitted by the apologists of the Papacy, justifies all the discontent of the subjects of the Pope, all their complaints, all their recriminations, all their outbreaks previous to 1846.

But let me ask this question. Is it true that, since 1846, the Papal Government has ceased to be the worst in Europe?

If you can show me a worse, I will go and announce the discovery at Rome, and I rather fancy I shall considerably astonish the Romans.

Is the absolute authority of the Papacy limited in any way but by the individual virtues of the Pope? No.

Does the Constitution of 1848, or the Motu Proprio of 1849, set limits to this authority? No. The first has been torn up, the second never observed.

Has the Pope renounced his title of administrator, or irresponsible guardian of the patrimony of Catholicism? Never.

Is the management of public affairs exclusively in the hand of prelates? As much so as ever.

Are the higher posts in the State still by law interdicted to laymen? Not by law, but in fact they are.

Are the different powers still confounded in practice? More so than they ever were. The governors of cities act as judges, and the bishops as public administrators.

Has the Pope abandoned any portion of his infallibility as to worldly matters? None whatever.

Has he deprived himself of the right of overruling the decisions of the Courts of Appeal? No.

Has the Cardinal Secretary of State ceased to be a reigning Minister? He reigns as absolutely as ever; and the other ministers are more like footmen than clerks to him. They may be seen any morning waiting in his antechamber.

Is there a Council of Ministers? Yes, whereat the Ministers attend to receive the Cardinal's orders.

Are the public finances publicly administered? No.

Does the nation vote the taxes, or are they taken from the nation? The old system still exists.

Are municipal liberties at all extended? They were greater in 1816 than they are at present.

At the present day, as in the days of the most extreme pontifical despotism, the Pope is all in all; he has all; he can do all; he exercises a perpetual dictatorship, without control or limit.

I own no systematic aversion to the exceptional exercise of a dictatorship. The ancient Romans knew its value, often had recourse to it, and derived benefit from it. When the enemy was at the gates, and the Republic in danger, the Senate and the people, usually so suspicious, placed all their rights in the hands of one man, and cried, "Save us!" Some grand dictatorships are to be found in the history of all times and all peoples. If we examine the different stages of humanity, we shall find almost at every one a dictator. One dictatorship created the unity of France, another its military greatness, and a third its prosperity in peace. Benefits so important as these, which nations cannot acquire alone, are well worth the temporary sacrifice of every liberty. A man of genius, who is at the same time an honest man, and who becomes invested with a boundless authority, is almost a God upon earth.

But the duties of the dictator are in exact proportion to the extent of his powers. A parliamentary sovereign, who walks in a narrow path traced out by two Chambers, and who hears discussed in the morning what he is to do in the evening, is almost innocent of the faults of his reign. On the contrary, the less a dictator is responsible for his actions by the terms of the Constitution, the more does he become so in the eyes of posterity. History will reproach him for the good he has failed to do, when he could do everything; and his omissions will be accounted to him for crimes.

I will add, that under no circumstances should the dictatorship last long. Not only would it be an absurdity to attempt to make it hereditary, but the man who should think of exercising it perpetually would be insane. A sick patient allows himself to be bound by the surgeon who is about to save his life; but when the operation is over he demands to be set at liberty. Nations act in a like manner. From the day when the benefits conferred by the master cease to compensate for the loss of liberty, the nation demands the restoration of its rights, and a wise dictator will comply with the demand.

I have often conversed in the Papal States with enlightened and honourable men, who rank as the heads of the middle class. They have said to me almost unanimously:—

"If a man were to drop down from Heaven among us with sufficient power to cut to the root of abuses, to reform the administration, to send the priests to church and the Austrians to Vienna, to promulgate a civil code, make the country healthy, restore the plains to cultivation, encourage manufactures, give freedom to commerce, construct railways, secularize education, propagate modern ideas, and put us into a condition to bear comparison with the most enlightened countries in Europe, we would fall at his feet, and obey him as we do God. You are told that we are ungovernable. Give us but a prince capable of governing, and you shall see whether we will haggle about the conditions of power! Be he who he may, and come he whence he may, he shall be absolutely free to do what he chooses, so long as there is anything to be done. All we ask is, that when his task is accomplished, he shall let us share the power with him. Rest assured that even then we shall give him good measure. The Italians are accommodating, and are not ungrateful. But ask us not to support this everlasting, do-nothing, tormenting, ruinous dictatorship, which a succession of decrepit old men transmit from one to another. Nor do they even exercise it themselves; but each in his turn, too weak to govern, hastens to shift a burden which overpowers him, and delivers us, bound hand and foot, to the worst of his Cardinals!"

It is too true that the Popes do not themselves exercise their absolute power. If the White Pope, or the Holy Father, governed personally, we might hope, with a little aid from the imagination, that a miracle of grace would make him walk straight. He is rarely very capable or very highly educated: but as the statue of the Commendatore said, "He who is enlightened by Heaven wants no other light." Unfortunately the White Pope transfers his political functions to a Red Pope, that is to say, an omnipotent and irresponsible Cardinal, under the name of a Secretary of State. This one man represents the sovereign within and without,—speaks for him, acts for him, replies to foreigners, commands his subjects, expresses the Pope's will, and not unfrequently imposes his own upon him.

This second-hand dictator has the best reasons in the world for abusing his power. If he could hope to succeed his master, and wear the crown in his turn, he might set an example, or make a show, of all the virtues. But it is impossible for a Secretary of State to be elected Pope. Not only is custom opposed to it, but human nature forbids it. Never will the Cardinals in conclave assembled agree among one another to crown the man who has ruled them all during a reign. Old Lambruschini had taken all his measures to secure his election. There were very few Cardinals who had not promised him their voices, and yet it was Pius IX. who ascended the throne. The illustrious Consalvi, one of the great statesmen of our age, made the same attempt with as little success. After such instances it is clear that Cardinal Antonelli has no chance of attaining the tiara; and therefore no interest in doing good.

If he could at least hope that the successor of Pius IX. would retain him in his functions, he might observe a little caution. But it has never yet happened that the same Secretary of State has reigned under two Popes. Such an event never will occur, because it never has occurred. We are in a land where the future is the very humble servant of the past. Tradition absolutely requires that a new Pope should disgrace the favourite of his predecessor, by way of initiating his Papacy with a stroke of popularity.

Thus every Secretary of State is duly warned that whenever his master takes the road heavenward, he must become lost again in the common herd of the Sacred College. He feels, therefore, that he ought to make the best possible use of his time.

He has, moreover, the comfortable assurance that after his disgrace, he will not be called upon for any account of his past deeds; for the least of the Cardinals is as inviolable as the twelve Apostles. Surely, then, he would be a fool to refuse anything while he has the power to take it.

This is the place to sketch, in a few pages, the portraits of the two men,—one of whom possesses, and the other exercises, the dictatorship over three millions of unfortunate beings.



CHAPTER X.

PIUS IX.

Old age, majesty, and misfortune have a claim to the respect of all right-minded persons: fear not that I shall be wanting in such respect.

But truth has also its claims: it also is old, it is majestic, it is holy, and it is sometimes cruelly ill-treated by men.

I shall not forget that the Pope is sixty-seven years of age, that he wears a crown officially venerated by a hundred and thirty-nine millions of Catholics, that his private life has ever been exemplary, that he observes the most noble disinterestedness upon a throne where selfishness has long held sway, that he spontaneously commenced his reign by conferring benefits, that his first acts held out the fairest hopes to Italy and to Europe, that he has suffered the lingering torture of exile, that he exercises a precarious and dependent royalty under the protection of two foreign armies, and that he lives under the control of a Cardinal. But those who have fallen victims to the efforts made to replace him on his throne, those whom the Austrians have, at his request, shot and sabred, in order to re-establish his authority, and even those who toil in the plague-stricken plains of the Roman Campagna to fill his treasury, are far more to be pitied than he is.

Giovanni-Maria, dei Conti Mastai Ferretti, born the 13th May, 1792, and elected Pope the 16th June, 1846, under the name of Pius IX., is a man who looks more than his actual age; he is short, obese, somewhat pallid, and in precarious health. His benevolent and sleepy countenance breathes good-nature and lassitude, but has nothing of an imposing character. Gregory XVI., though ugly and pimply, is said to have had a grand air.

Pius IX. plays his part in the gorgeous shows of the Roman Catholic Church indifferently well. The faithful who have come from afar to see him perform Mass, are a little surprised to see him take a pinch of snuff in the midst of the azure-tinted clouds of incense. In his hours of leisure he plays at billiards for exercise, by order of his physicians.

He believes in God. He is not only a good Christian, but a devotee. In his enthusiasm for the Virgin Mary, he has invented a useless dogma, and disfigured the Piazza di Spagna by a monument of bad taste. His morals are pure, as they always have been, even when he was a young priest: such instances are common enough among our clergy, but rare, not to say miraculous, beyond the Alps.

He has nephews, who, wonderful to relate, are neither rich nor powerful, nor even princes. And yet there is no law which prevents him from spoiling his subjects for the benefit of his family. Gregory XIII. gave his nephew Ludovisi L160,000 of good paper, worth so much cash. The Borghese family bought at one stroke ninety-five farms with the money of Paul V. A commission which met in 1640, under the presidence of the Reverend Father Vitelleschi, General of the Jesuits, decided, in order to put an end to such abuses, that the Popes should confine themselves to entailing property to the amount of L16,000 a year upon their favourite nephew and his family (with the right of creating a second heir to the same privileges), and that the portion of each of their nieces should not exceed L36,000.

I am aware that nepotism fell into desuetude at the commencement of the eighteenth century; but there was nothing to prevent Pius IX. from bringing it into fashion again, after the example of Pius VI., if he chose; but he does not choose to do so. His relations are of the second order of nobility, and are not rich: he has done nothing to alter their position. His nephew, Count Mastai Ferretti, was recently married; and the Pope's wedding present consisted of a few diamonds, worth about L8000. Nor did this modest gift cost the nation one baioccho. The diamonds came from the Sovereign of Turkey. Some ten years ago the Sultan of Constantinople, the Commander of the Faithful, presented the commander of the unfaithful with a saddle embroidered with precious stones. The travellers in the restoring line, who used to flock to Gaeta and Portici, carried off a great number of them in their bags; what they left are in the casket of the young Countess Ferretti.

The character of this respectable old man, is made up of devotion, simplicity, vanity, weakness, and obstinacy, with an occasional touch of rancour. He blesses with unction, and pardons with difficulty; he is a good priest, and an insufficient king.

His intellect, which has raised such great hopes, and caused such cruel disappointment, is of a very ordinary capacity. I can hardly think he is infallible in temporal matters. His education is that of the average of cardinals in general. He talks French pretty well.

The Romans formed an exaggerated opinion of him at his accession, and have done so ever since. In 1847, when he honestly manifested a desire to do good, they called him a great man, whereas in point of fact he was simply a worthy man who wished to act better than his predecessors had done, and thereby to win some applause from Europe. In 1859, he passes for a violent re-actionist, because events have discouraged his good intentions: and above all, because Cardinal Antonelli, who masters him by fear, violently draws him backwards. I consider him as meriting neither past admiration nor present hatred. I pity him for having loosened the rein upon his people, without possessing the firmness requisite to restrain them seasonably. I pity still more that infirmity of character which now allows more evil to be done in his name than he has ever himself done good.

The failure of all his enterprises, and three or four accidents which happened in his presence, have given rise to the popular belief that the Vicar of Jesus Christ is what the Italians call jettatore—in other words, that he has the evil eye. When he drives along the Corso, the old women fall down on their knees, but they snap their fingers at him beneath their cloaks.

The members of the Italian secret societies impute to him—though for other reasons—all the evils which afflict their country. It is evident that the Italian question would be greatly simplified, if there were no Pope at Rome; but the hatred of the Mazzinists against Pius IX. is to be condemned in all its personal aspects. They would kill him to a certainty, if our troops were not there to defend him. This murder would be as unjust as that of Louis XVI., and as useless. The guillotine would deprive a good old man of his life, but it would not put an end to the bad principle of sacerdotal monarchy.

I did not seek an audience of Pius IX.; I neither kissed his hand nor his slipper; the only mark of attention I received from him was a few lines of insult in the Giornale di Roma. Still, I never can hear him accused without defending him.

Let my readers for a moment put themselves in the place of this too illustrious and too unfortunate old man. After having been for nearly two years the favourite of public opinion, and the lion of Europe, he found himself obliged to quit the Quirinal palace at a moment's notice. At Gaeta and Portici he tasted those lingering hours which sour the spirit of the exile. A grand and time-honoured principle, of which the legitimacy is not doubtful to him, was violated in his person. His advisers unanimously said to him:

"It is your own fault. You have endangered the monarchy by your ideas of progress. The immobility of governments is the sine qua non of the stability of thrones. You will not doubt this, if you read again the history of your predecessors."

He had had time to become converted to this belief, when the armies of the Catholic powers once more opened for him the road to Rome. Overjoyed at seeing the principle saved, he vowed to himself never again to compromise it, but to reign without progress, according to papal tradition. But these very foreign powers who had saved his crown, were the first to impose on him the condition of advancing! What was to be done? He was equally afraid to promise everything, and to refuse everything. After a long hesitation, he promised in spite of himself; then he absolved himself, for the sake of the future, from the engagements he had made for the sake of the present.

Now he is out of humour with his people, with the French, and with himself. He knows the nation is suffering, but he allows himself to be persuaded that the misfortunes of the nation are indispensable to the safety of the Church. Those about him take care that the reproaches of his conscience shall be stifled by the recollections of 1848 and the dread of a new revolution. He stops his eyes and his ears, and prepares to die calmly between his furious subjects on one hand, and his dissatisfied protectors on the other. Any man wanting in energy, placed as he is, would behave exactly in the same manner. The fault is not his, it is that of weakness and old-age.

But I do not undertake to obtain the acquittal of his Minister of State, Cardinal Antonelli.



CHAPTER XI.

ANTONELLI.

He was born in a den of thieves. His native place, Sonnino, is more celebrated in the history of crime than all Arcadia in the annals of virtue. This nest of vultures was hidden in the southern mountains, towards the Neapolitan frontier. Roads, impracticable to mounted dragoons, winding through brakes and thickets; forests, impenetrable to the stranger; deep ravines and gloomy caverns,—all combined to form a most desirable landscape, for the convenience of crime. The houses of Sonnino, old, ill-built, flung pell-mell one, upon the other, and almost uninhabitable by human beings, were, in point of fact, little else than depots of pillage and magazines of rapine. The population, alert and vigorous, had for many centuries practised armed robbery and depredation, and gained its livelihood at the point of the carbine. New-born infants inhaled contempt of the law with the mountain air, and drew in the love of others' goods with their mothers' milk. Almost as soon as they could walk, they assumed the cioccie, or mocassins of untanned leather, with which they learned to run fearlessly along the edge of the giddiest mountain precipices. When they had acquired the art of pursuing and escaping, of taking without being taken, the knowledge of the value of the different coins, the arithmetic of the distribution of booty, and the principles of the rights of nations as they are practised among the Apaches or the Comanches, their education was deemed complete. They required no teaching to learn how to apply the spoil, and to satisfy their passions in the hour of victory.

In the year of grace 1806, this sensual, brutal, impious, superstitious, ignorant, and cunning race endowed Italy with a little mountaineer, known as Giacomo Antonelli.

Hawks do not hatch doves. This is an axiom in natural history which has no need of demonstration. Had Giacomo Antonelli been gifted at his birth with the simple virtues of an Arcadian shepherd, his village would have instantly disowned him. But the influence of certain events modified his conduct, although they failed to modify his nature. His infancy and his childhood were subjected to two opposing influences. If he received his earliest lessons from successful brigandage, his next teachers were the gendarmerie. When he was hardly four years old, the discharge of a high moral lesson shook his ears: it was the French troops who were shooting brigands in the outskirts of Sonnino. After the return of Pius VII. he witnessed the decapitation of a few neighbouring relatives who had often dandled him on their knees. Under Leo XII. it was still worse. Those wholesome correctives, the wooden horse and the supple-jack, were permanently established in the village square. About once a fortnight the authorities rased the house of some brigand, after sending his family to the galleys, and paying a reward to the informer who had denounced him. St. Peter's Gate, which adjoins the house of the Antonellis, was ornamented with a garland of human heads, which eloquent relics grinned dogmatically enough in their iron cages. If the stage be a school of life, surely such a stage as this is a rare teacher. Young Giacomo was enabled to reflect upon the inconveniences of brigandage, even before he had tasted its sweets. About him some men of progress had already engaged in industrial pursuits of a less hazardous nature than robbery. His own father, who, it was whispered, had in him the stuff of a Grasparone or a Passatore, instead of exposing himself upon the highways, took to keeping bullocks, he then became an Intendant, and subsequently was made a Municipal Receiver; by which occupations he acquired more money at considerably less risk.

The young Antonelli hesitated for some time as to the choice of a calling. His natural vocation was that of the inhabitants of Sonnino in general, to live in plenty, to enjoy every sort of pleasure, to make himself at home everywhere, to be dependent upon nobody, to rule others, and to frighten them, if necessary, but, above all, to violate the laws with impunity. With the view of attaining so lofty an end without exposing his life, for which he ever had a most particular regard, he entered the great seminary of Rome.

In our land of scepticism, a young man enters the seminary with the hope of being ordained a priest: Antonelli entered it with the opposite intention. But in the capital of the Catholic Church, young Levites of ordinary intelligence become magistrates, prefects, councillors of state, and ministers, while the "dry fruit[6] is thought good enough for making priests."

Antonelli so distinguished himself, that (with Heaven's help) he escaped the sacrament of Ordination. He has never said mass: he has never confessed a penitent; I won't swear he has even confessed himself. He gained what was of more value than all the Christian virtues—the friendship of Gregory XVI. He became a prelate, a magistrate, a prefect, Secretary General of the Interior, and Minister of Finance. No one can say he has not chosen the right path. A finance minister, if he knows anything of his business, can lay by more money in six months than all the brigands of Sonnino in twenty years.

Under Gregory XVI. he had been a reactionist, to please his sovereign. On the accession of Pius IX., for the same reason, he professed liberal ideas. A red hat and a ministerial portfolio were the recompense of his new convictions, and proved to the inhabitants of Sonnino that liberalism itself is more lucrative than brigandage. What a practical lesson for those mountaineers! One of themselves clothed in purple and fine linen, actually riding in his gilt coach, passed the barracks, and their old friends the dragoons presenting arms, instead of firing long shots at him!

He obtained the same influence over the new Pope that he had over the old one, thus proving that people may be got hold of without stopping them on the highway. Pius IX., who had no secrets from him, confided to him his wish to correct abuses, without concealing his fear of succeeding too well. He served the Holy Father, even in his irresolutions. As President of the Supreme Council of State, he proposed reforms, and as Minister he postponed their adoption. Nobody was more active than he, whether in settling or in violating the constitution of 1848. He sent Durando to fight the Austrians, and disavowed him after the battle.

He quitted the ministry as soon as he found there were dangers to be encountered, but assisted the Pope in his secret opposition to his ministers. The murder of Count Rossi gave him serious cause for reflection. A man don't take the trouble to be born at Sonnino, in order to let himself be assassinated: quite the contrary. He placed the Pope—and himself—in safety, and then went to Gaeta to play the part of Secretary of State in partibus.

From this exile dates his omnipotence over the will of the Holy Father, his reinstatement in the esteem of the Austrians, and the consistency in his whole conduct. Since then no more contradictions in his political life. They who formally accused him of hesitating between the welfare of the nation and his own personal interest are reduced to silence. He wishes to restore the absolute power of the Pope, in order that he may dispose of it at his ease. He prevents all reconciliation between Pius IX. and his subjects; he summons the cannon of Catholicism to effect the conquest of Rome. He ill-uses the French, who are willing to die for him; he turns a deaf ear to the liberal counsels of Napoleon III.; he designedly prolongs the exile of his master; he draws up the promises of the Motu Proprio, while devising means to elude them. At length, he returns to Rome, and for ten years continues to reign over a timid old man and an enslaved people, opposing a passive resistance to all the counsels of diplomacy and all the demands of Europe. Clinging tenaciously to power, reckless as to the future, misusing present opportunities, and day by day increasing his fortune—after the manner of Sonnino.

In this year of grace 1859, he is fifty-three years of age. He presents the appearance of a well-preserved man. His frame is slight and robust, and his constitution is that of a mountaineer. The breadth of his forehead, the brilliancy of his eyes, his beak-like nose, and all the upper part of his face inspire a certain awe. His countenance, of almost Moorish hue, is at times lit up by flashes of intellect. But his heavy jaw, his long fang-like teeth, and his thick lips express the grossest appetites. He gives you the idea of a minister grafted on a savage. When he assists the Pope in the ceremonies of the Holy Week he is magnificently disdainful and impertinent. He turns from time to time in the direction of the diplomatic tribune, and looks without a smile at the poor ambassadors, whom he cajoles from morning to night. You admire the actor who bullies his public. But when at an evening party he engages in close conversation with a handsome woman, the play of his countenance shows the direction of his thoughts, and those of the imaginative observer are imperceptibly carried to a roadside in a lonely forest, in which the principal objects are prostrate postilions, an overturned carriage, trembling females, and a select party of the inhabitants of Sonnino!

He lives in the Vatican, immediately over the Pope. The Romans ask punningly which is the uppermost, the Pope or Antonelli?

All classes of society hate him equally. Concini himself was not more cordially detested. He is the only living man concerning whom an entire people is agreed.

A Roman prince furnished me with some information respecting the relative fortunes of the nobility. When he gave me the list he said,

"You will remark the names of two individuals, the amount of whose property is described as unlimited. They are Torlonia and Antonelli. They have both made large fortunes in a few years,—the first by speculation, the second by power."

The Cardinals Altieri and Antonelli were one day disputing upon some point in the Pope's presence. They flatly contradicted one another; and the Pope inclined to the opinion of his Minister. "Since your Holiness," said the noble Altieri, "accords belief to a ciociari[7] rather than to a Roman prince, I have nothing to do but to withdraw."

The Apostles themselves appear to entertain no very amicable feelings towards the Secretary of State. The last time the Pope made a solemn entry into his capital (I think it was after his journey to Bologna), the Porta del Popolo and the Corso were according to custom hung with draperies, behind which the old statues of St. Peter and St. Paul were completely hidden. Accordingly the people were entertained by finding the following dialogue appended to the corner of the street:—

Peter to Paul. "It seems to me, old fellow, that we are somewhat forsaken here."

Paul to Peter. "What would you have? We are no longer anything. There is but James in the world now."

I am aware that hatred proves nothing—even the hatred of Apostles. The French nation, which claims to be thought just, insulted the funeral procession of Louis XIV. It also occasionally detested Henri IV. for his economy, and Napoleon for his victories. No statesman should be judged upon the testimony of his enemies. The only evidence we should admit either for or against him, is his public acts. The only witnesses to which any weight should be attributed are the greatness and the prosperity of the country he governs.

Such an inquiry would, I fear, be ruinous to Antonelli. The nation reproaches him with all the evils it has suffered for the last ten years. The public wretchedness and ignorance, the decline of the arts, the entire suppression of liberty, the ever-present curse of foreign occupation,—all fall upon his head, because he alone is responsible for everything.

It may be alleged that he has at least served the reactionary party. I much doubt it. What internal factions has he suppressed? Secret societies have swarmed in Rome during his reign. What remonstrances from without has he silenced? Europe continues to complain unanimously, and day by day lifts up its voice a tone or two higher. He has failed to reconcile one single party or one single power to the Holy father. During his ten years' dictatorship, he has neither gained the esteem of one foreigner nor the confidence of one Roman. All he has gained is time. His pretended capacity is but slyness. To the trickery of the present he adds the cunning of the red Indian; but he has not that largeness of view without which it is impossible to establish firmly the slavery of the people. No one possesses in a greater degree than he the art of dragging on an affair, and manoeuvring with and tiring out diplomatists; but it is not by pleasantries of this sort that a tottering tyranny can be propped up. Although he employs every subterfuge known to dishonest policy, I am not quite sure that he has even the craft of a politician.

The attainment of his own end does not in fact require it. For after all, what is his end? In what hope, with what aim, did he come down from the mountains of Sonnino?

Do you really believe he thought of becoming the benefactor of the nation?—or the saviour of the Papacy?—or the Don Quixote of the Church? Not such a fool! He thought, first, of himself; secondly, of his family.

His family is flourishing. His four brothers, Filippo, Luigi, Gregorio, and—save the mark!—Angelo, all wore the cioccie in their younger days; they now, one and all, wear the count's coronet. One is governor of the bank, a capital post, and since poor Campana's condemnation he has got the Monte di Pieta. Another is Conservator of Rome, under a Senator especially selected for his incapacity. Another follows openly the trape of a monopolist, with immense facilities for either preventing or authorizing exportation, according as his own warehouses happen to be full or empty. The youngest is the commercial traveller, the diplomatist, the messenger of the family, Angelus Domini. A cousin of the family, Count Dandini, reigns over the police. This little group is perpetually at work adding to a fortune which is invisible, impalpable, and incalculable. The house of Antonelli is not pitied at Sonnino.

As for the Secretary of State, all who know him intimately, both men and women, agree that he leads a pleasant life. If it were not for the bore of making head against the diplomatists, and giving audience every morning, he would be the happiest of mountaineers. His tastes are simple; a scarlet silk robe, unlimited power, an enormous fortune, a European reputation, and all the pleasures within man's reach—this trifle satisfies the simple tastes of the Cardinal Minister. Add, by the bye, a splendid collection of minerals, perfectly classified which he is constantly enriching with the passion of an amateur and the tenderness of a father.

I was saying just now that he has always escaped the sacrament of Holy Orders. He is Cardinal Deacon. The good souls who will have it that all goes well at Rome, dwell with fervour on the advantage he possesses in not being a priest. If he is accused of possessing inordinate wealth, these indulgent Christians reply, that he is not a priest! If you charge him with having read Machiavelli to good purpose; admitted—what then?—he is no priest! If the tongue of scandal is over-free with his private life; still the ready reply, that he is not a priest! If Deacons are thus privileged, what latitude may we not claim who have not even assumed the tonsure?

This highly-blest mortal has one weakness—truly a very natural one. He fears death. A certain fair lady, who had been honoured by his Eminence's particular attentions, thus illustrated the fact,

"Upon meeting me at our rendezvous, he seized me like a madman, and with trembling eagerness examined my pockets. It was only when he had assured himself that I had no concealed weapon about me that he seemed to remember our friendship."

One man alone has dared to threaten a life so precious to itself, and he was an idiot. Instigated by some of the secret societies, this poor crazed wretch concealed himself beneath the staircase of the Vatican, and awaited the coming of the Cardinal. When the intended victim appeared, the idiot with much difficulty drew from beneath his waistcoat—a table-fork! Antonelli saw the terrible weapon, and bounded backwards with a spring which an Alpine chamois-hunter might have envied. The miserable assassin was instantly seized, bound, and delivered over to justice. The Roman tribunals, so often lenient towards the really guilty, had no mercy for this real innocent. He was beheaded. The Cardinal, full of pity, fell—officially—at the Pope's feet, and asked for a pardon which he well knew would be refused. He pays the widow a pension: is not this the act of a clever man?

Since the day when that formidable fork glittered before his eyes, he has taken excessive precautions. His horses are broken to gallop furiously through the streets, at considerable public risk. Occasionally, his carriage knocks down and runs over a little boy or girl. With characteristic magnanimity, he sends the parents fifty crowns.

Antonelli has been compared to Mazarin. They have, in common, the fear of death, inordinate love of money, a strong family feeling, utter indifference to the people's welfare, contempt for mankind, and some other accidental points of resemblance. They were born in the same mountains, or nearly so. One obtained the influence over a woman's heart which the other possesses over the mind of an old man. Both governed unscrupulously, and both have merited and obtained the hatred of their contemporaries. They have talked French comically, without being insensible to any of the delicate niceties of the language.

Still there would be manifest injustice in placing them in the same rank. The selfish Mazarin dictated to Europe the treaties of Westphalia, and the Peace of the Pyrenees: he founded by diplomacy the greatness of Louis XIV., and managed the affairs of the French monarchy, without in any way neglecting his own.

Antonelli has made his fortune at the expense of the nation, the Pope, and the Church. Mazarin may be compared to a skilful but rascally tailor, who dresses his customers well, while he contrives to cabbage sundry yards of their cloth; Antonelli, to those Jews of the Middle Ages, who demolished the Coliseum for the sake of the old iron in the walls.



CHAPTER XII.

PRIESTLY GOVERNMENT.

If the Pope were merely the head of the Roman Catholic Church; if, limiting his action to the interior of temples, he would renounce the sway over temporal matters about which he knows nothing, his countrymen of Rome, Ancona, and Bologna might govern themselves as people do in London or in Paris. The administration would be lay, the laws would be lay, the nation would provide for its own wants with its own revenues, as is the custom in all civilized countries.

As for the general expenses of the Roman Catholic worship, which in point of fact no more specially concern the Romans than they do the Champenois, a voluntary contribution made by one hundred and thirty-nine millions of men would amply provide for them. If each individual among the faithful were to give a halfpenny per annum, the head of the Church would have something like L300,000 to spend upon his wax tapers and his incense, his choristers and his sacristans, and the repairs of the basilica of St. Peter's. No Roman Catholic would think of refusing his quota, because the Holy Father, entirely separated from worldly interests, would not be in a position to offend anybody. This small tax would, therefore, restore independence to the Romans without diminishing the independence of the Pope.

Unfortunately the Pope is a king. In this capacity he must have a Court, or something approaching to it. He selects his courtiers among men of his own faith, his own opinions, and his own profession: nothing can be more reasonable. These courtiers, in their turn, dispose of the different offices of state, spiritual or temporal, just as it may happen. Nor can the Sovereign object to this pretension as being ridiculous. Moreover he naturally hopes to be more faithfully served by priests than laymen; while he feels that the salaries attached to the best-paid places are necessary to the splendour of his Court.

Thence it follows that to preach the secularization of the government to the Pope, is to preach to the winds. Here you have a man who would not be a layman, who pities laymen simply because they are laymen, regarding them as a caste inferior to his own; who has received an anti-lay education; who thinks differently to laymen on all important points; and you expect this man will share his power with laymen, in an empire where he is absolute master of all and everything! You require him to surround himself with laymen, to summon them to his councils, and to confide to them the execution of his behests!

Supposing, however, that for some reason or other he fears you, and wishes to humour you a little, see what he will do. He will seek in the outer offices of his ministers some lay secretary, or assistant, or clerk, a man without character or talent; he will employ him, and take care that his incapacity shall be universally known and admitted. After which, he will say to you sadly, "I have done what I could." But if he were to speak the honest truth, he would at once say, "If you wish to secularize anything, begin by putting laymen in my place."

It is not in 1859 that the Pope will venture to speak so haughtily. Intimidated by the protection of France, deafened by the unanimous complaints of his subjects, obliged to reckon with public opinion, he declares that he has secularized everything. "Count my functionaries," he says:

"I have 14,576 laymen in my service. You have been told that ecclesiastics monopolize the public service. Show me these ecclesiastics! The Count de Rayneval looked for them, and could find but ninety-eight; and even of those, the greater part were not in priests' orders! Be assured we have long since broken with the clerical regime. I myself decreed the admissibility of laymen to all offices but one. In order to show my sincerity, for some time I had lay ministers! I entrusted the finances to a mere accountant, the department of justice to an obscure little advocate, and that of war to a man of business who had been intendant to several Cardinals. I admit that for the moment we have no laymen in the Ministry; but my subjects may console themselves by reflecting that the law does not prevent me from appointing them.

"In the provinces, out of eighteen prefects, I appointed three laymen. If I afterwards substituted prelates for those three, it was because the people loudly called for the change. Is it my fault if the people respect nothing but the ecclesiastical garb?"

This style of defence may deceive some good easy folk; but I think if I were Pope, or Secretary of State, or even a simple supporter of the Pontifical administration, I should prefer telling the plain truth. That truth is strictly logical, it is in conformity with the principle of the Government; it emanates from the Constitution. Things are exactly what they ought to be, if not for the welfare of the people, at least for the greatness, security, and satisfaction of its temporal head.

The truth then is that all the ministers, all the prefects, all the ambassadors, all the court dignitaries, and all the judges of the superior tribunals, are ecclesiastics; that the Secretary of the Brevi and the Memoriali the Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the Council of State and the Council of Finances, the Director-General of the Police, the Director of Public Health and Prisons, the Director of the Archives, the Attorney-General of the Fisc, the President and the Secretary of the Cadastro the Agricultural President and Commission, are all ecclesiastics. The public education is in the hands of ecclesiastics, under the direction of thirteen Cardinals. All the charitable establishments, all the funds applicable to the relief of the poor, are the patrimony of ecclesiastical directors. Congregations of Cardinals decide causes in their leisure hours, and the Bishops of the kingdom are so many living tribunals.

Why seek to conceal from Europe so natural an order of things?

Let Europe rather be told what it did when it re-established a priest on the throne of Rome.

All the offices which confer power or profit belong first to the Pope, then to the Secretary of State, then to the Cardinals, and lastly to the Prelates. Everybody takes his share according to the hierarchical order; and when all are satisfied, the crumbs of power are thrown to the nation at large; in other words, the 14,596 places which no ecclesiastic chooses to take, particularly the distinguished office of Guardia Campestre, a sort of rural police. Nobody need wonder at such a distribution of places. In the government of Rome, the Pope is everything, the Secretary of State is almost everything, the Cardinals are something, and the priests on the road to become something. The lay nation, which marries and gives in marriage, and peoples the State, is nothing—never will be anything.