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 conferrin