wnfall as they drove through
the streets. Rome itself was a huge cloister in which the only
animation was in the processions of priests and students of the
theological seminaries, or the more melancholy funerals in which the
hooded and gowned friars added gloom to the mystery of our common
lot,--no industry except those of jewelry and art and that of
ecclesiastical apparatus. The principal revenues were the charity of
the outside world,--St. Peter's pence. Government was not by law,
but by the arbitrary decisions of the most incompetent of officials,
enforced by the bayonets of a foreign army, the soldiers of which
despised the population, and lived in the most complete separation
from it. The Pope himself had little affection for his French
protectorate, which urged, and sometimes effected, certain
improvements which he regarded as innovations and invasions.

I had, soon after my arrival, a case before the lower tribunal which
showed how the administration of justice was regarded. Having a
relapse into the malady that had followed my breakdown in Switzerland,
which was exaggerated by the heat of Rome, I was ordered by my
physician to Ariccia to recruit, and I left my apartment, which was
also the consulate, and took quarters at the little Ariccian inn which
was the resort of the artists at that date.

As I could not absent myself from the office longer than ten days at
a time without permission of the government at Washington, I had to
return _pro forma_ at that term, when, to my surprise, I found my
apartment in possession of a stranger. I intimated his dislodging, to
which he replied that he had taken the rooms and paid his rent and
would not go. At that time there was a temporary occupation--merely
nominal, however--of the legation by ex-Governor Randall of Wisconsin.
The minister had taken an apartment where he could mount the arms of
the Republic, and had then gone off on his European tour, leaving me
in occupation of the post as charge d'affaires and in care of his
rooms. As I had thus another place to sleep in, I evacuated the
consular quarters not unwillingly, removing all my effects except a
set of silver spoons which my mother had given me on my leaving home,
and which were heirlooms. The spoons were being cleaned, the landlady
said, and would be ready the next day. I called for them again, and
was again deferred, when I went at once to the tribunal and made a
claim for my spoons. On statement of the case,