deavoured to press on the signature
of the Concordat, so as to startle the world by the simultaneous
announcement of the pacification of the Continent and of the healing
of the great religious schism in France. But the clerical machinery
worked too slowly to admit of this projected _coup de theatre_. In
Bonaparte's proposals of February 25th, 1801, there were several
demands already found to be inadmissible at the Vatican;[155] and
matters came to a deadlock until the Pope invested Spina with larger
powers for negotiating at Paris. Consalvi also proceeded to Paris,
where he was received in state with other ambassadors at the
Tuileries, the sight of a cardinal's robe causing no little sensation.
The First Consul granted him a long interview, speaking at first
somewhat seriously, but gradually becoming more affable and gracious.
Yet as his behaviour softened his demands stiffened; and at the close
of the audience he pressed Consalvi to sign a somewhat unfavourable
version of the compact within five days, otherwise the negotiations
would be at an end and a _national religion would be adopted_--an
enterprise for which the auguries promised complete success. At a
later interview he expressed the same resolution in homely phrase:
when Consalvi pressed him to take a firm stand against the
"constitutional" intruders, he laughingly remarked that he could do no
more until he knew how he stood with Rome; for "you know that when
one cannot arrange matters with God, one comes to terms with the
devil."[156]

This dalliance with the "constitutionals" might have been more than an
astute ruse, and Consalvi knew it. In framing a national Church the
First Consul would have appealed not only to the old Gallican feeling,
still strong among the clerics and laity, but also to the potent force
of French nationality. The experiment might have been managed so as to
offend none but the strictest Catholics, who were less to be feared
than the free-thinkers. Consalvi was not far wrong when, writing of
the official world at Paris, he said that only Bonaparte really
desired a Concordat.

The First Consul's motives in seeking the alliance of Rome have, very
naturally, been subjected to searching criticism; and in forcing the
Concordat on France, and also on Rome, he was certainly undertaking
the most difficult negotiation of his life.[157] But his preference
for the Roman connection was an act of far-reaching statecraft. He saw
that a national Chur