and Quirinal! Yes, yes that was what brother Clement used to do
in the Franciscan convent; he was always scolding about the pope."

"And yet he let men befool him and make a pope of him," said Ganganelli.
"Ah, Lorenzo, they were indeed good purposes that decided me, and good
and holy resolutions were in me when I bore this crown of St. Peter for
the first time. Ah, I was then so young, not in years, but in hopes and
illusions. I was so enthusiastic for the good and noble, and I wished to
serve it, to honor and glorify it in the name of God!"

"And in the end you have done so!" solemnly responded Lorenzo.

"I have wished to do so!" sighed Ganganelli, "but there it has ended.
I have been hemmed in everywhere; wherever I wished to press through,
I have always found a wall before me--a wall of prejudices, of ancient
customs, once received as indifferent, and at this wall my cardinals and
officials held watch, taking care that my will should be broken against
it, and not be able to speak through, in order to let in a little
freedom, a little fresh air, into our walled realm! They have curbed and
weakened my will, until nothing more of it subsists, and of my holiest
resolutions they have made a scarecrow before which foreign kings and
princes cry murder, and prophesy the downfall of their kingdoms if I
adhere to my innovations. Ah, the princes, the princes! I tell you,
Lorenzo, it is the princes who have undermined the happiness of the
world with their ideas of absolute power; they are the robbers of all
mankind; for freedom, which is the common property of all men, that
have they, like regular lawless highwaymen, appropriated for themselves
alone. They plundered the luck-pennies of all mankind, and coined them
into money adorned with their likenesses, and now all mankind run after
this money, thinking: 'If I gain that, then shall I have recovered my
part of human happiness which once belonged to all in common!' It has
come to this, Lorenzo, through the rapacity of princes, and yet they
still tremble upon their thrones, and fear that the people may one day
awake from their stupid slumber, all rising as one man, and cry in
the paling faces of their robbers: 'Give back what you have taken from
us--we will have what is ours; we require freedom and human right; we
will no longer remain slaves to tremble before a bugbear; we will be
free children of God, and have no one to fear but the God above us and
the consciences within our