l tortures,
expiated his blunder upon the rack.

LETTER XXII.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--The Pope, during his stay here, rose regularly every morning at
five o'clock, and went to bed every night before ten. The first hours of
the day he passed in prayers, breakfasted after the Mass was over,
transacted business till one, and dined at two. Between three and four
he took--his siesta, or nap; afterwards he attended the vespers, and when
they were over he passed an hour with the Bonapartes, or admitted to his
presence some members of the clergy. The day was concluded, as it was
begun, with some hours of devotion.

Had Pius VII. possessed the character of a Pius VI., he would never have
crossed the Alps; or had he been gifted with the spirit and talents of
Sextus V. or Leo X., he would never have entered France to crown
Bonaparte, without previously stipulating for himself that he should be
put in possession of the sovereignty of Italy. You can form no idea what
great stress was laid on this act of His Holiness by the Bonaparte
family, and what sacrifices were destined to be made had any serious and
obstinate resistance been apprehended. Threats were, indeed, employed
personally against the Pope, and bribes distributed to the refractory
members of the Sacred College; but it was no secret, either here or at
Milan, that Cardinal Fesch had carte blanche with regard to the
restoration of all provinces seized, since the war, from the Holy See, or
full territorial indemnities in their place, at the expense of Naples and
Tuscany; and, indeed, whatever the Roman pontiff has lost in Italy has
been taken from him by Bonaparte alone, and the apparent generosity which
policy and ambition required would, therefore, have merely been an act of
justice. Confiding foolishly in the honour and rectitude of Napoleon,
without any other security than the assertion of Fesch, Pius VII., within
a fortnight's stay in France, found the great difference between the
promises held out to him when residing as a Sovereign at Rome, and their
accomplishment when he had so far forgotten himself and his sacred
dignity as to inhabit as a guest the castle of the Tuileries.

Pius VII. mentioned, the day after his arrival at Fontainebleau, that it
would be a gratification to his own subjects were he enabled to
communicate to them the restoration of the former ecclesiastical domains,
as a free gift of the Emperor of the French, at their first