aving
ceased to practice, and not having witnessed for more than ten years, the
ceremonies of the Catholic religion, had returned to them with
irrepressible zeal. When the Pope was not detained in his apartments by
his delicate health in regard to which the difference in the climate,
compared with that of Italy, and the severity of the winter, required
him to take great precautions, he visited the churches, the museum, and
the establishments of public utility; and if the severe weather prevented
his going out, the persons who requested this favor were presented to
Pius VII. in the grand gallery of the Museum Napoleon. I was one day
asked by some ladies of my acquaintance to accompany them to this
audience of the Holy Father, and took much pleasure in doing so.

The long gallery of the museum was filled with ladies and gentlemen,
arranged in double lines, the greater part of whom were mothers of
families, with their children at their knees or in their arms, ready to
be presented for the Holy Father's blessing; and Pius VII. gazed on these
children with a sweetness and mildness truly angelic. Preceded by the
governor of the museum, and followed by the cardinals and lords of his
household, he advanced slowly between these two ranks of the faithful,
who fell on their knees as he passed, often stopping to place his hand on
the head of a child, to address a few words to the mother, or to give his
ring to be kissed. His dress was a plain white cassock without ornament.
Just as the Pope reached us, the director of the museum presented a lady
who, like the others, was awaiting the blessing of his Holiness on her
knees. I heard the director call this lady Madame, the Countess de
Genlis, upon which the Holy Father held out to her his ring, raised her
in the most affable manner, and said a few flattering words complimenting
her on her works, and the happy influence which they had exercised in
re-establishing the Catholic religion in France.

Sellers of chaplets and rosaries must have made their fortunes during
this winter, for in some shops more than one hundred dozen were sold per
day. During the month of January, by this branch of industry alone, one
merchant of the Rue Saint-Denis made forty thousand francs. All those
who presented themselves at the audience of the Holy Father, or who
pressed around him as he went out, made him bless chaplets for
themselves, for all their relations, and for their friends in Paris or in
the prov