mportant points, selected from some hundreds of pages in the works of
those who have treated on the wonderfully minute regulations and
prescriptions with which the whole matter is surrounded.

It will be easily seen that the moment of proceeding to the accessit is
the time for fine strokes of policy, for the most cautious prudence and
craftiest cunning. The general condition of the ground has been
disclosed by the results of the previous scrutiny. The possibilities and
chances begin to discover themselves. "Frequently," says the President
de Brosses, who was at Rome during the conclave which elected Benedict
XIV. in 1740, in the charming published volume of his
letters--"Frequently at the accessit everything which was done at the
preceding ceremony is reversed; and it is at the accessit that the most
subtle strokes of policy are practiced. Sometimes, for example, when a
party has been formed for any cardinal, the leader of the party keeps in
reserve for the accessit all the votes that he can count on as certain,
and induces those that he suspects may be doubtful to vote for the
person intended to be made pope at the first scrutiny, so as to make
sure by the number of votes given whether his supporters have been true
to their party, and to avoid unmasking his policy till he shall be sure
of his _coup_."

The story of the conclave which elected Cardinal Lambertini pope as
Benedict XIV., gives a curious picture of the schemes and intrigues
carried on in the mysterious seclusion of the conclave. Clement XII., of
the Florentine Corsini family, had died. The cardinal Corsini, his
nephew, was at the head of one faction in the conclave, and the cardinal
Albani, nephew of Clement XI., who died in 1721, at the head of the
other. The former party seemed at the beginning of the conclave to be
the most numerous. But De Brosses describes the two men as follows.
Corsini, he says, had little intelligence, less sense, and no capacity
for affairs. Of Albani, he says that he was "highly considered for his
capacity, and both hated and feared to excess--a man without faith,
without principles; an implacable enemy even when appearing to be
reconciled; of a great genius for affairs; inexhaustible in resource and
intrigue; the ablest man in the college, and the worst-hearted man in
Rome." It soon became clear that the struggle between the factions thus
led would be severe, and the conclave a long one. The history of the
plots and counterplots