i, showed no less than twenty acts of apostasy and blasphemy,
which made him unworthy of such a dignity. To this was replied that,
having obtained an indulgence in toto for what was past, he was a proper
subject; above all, as he had the protection of the Emperor of the
French. The Pope's Nuncio here then addressed himself to our Minister of
the Ecclesiastical Department, Portalis, who advised him not to speak to
Bonaparte of a matter upon which his mind had been made up; he,
nevertheless, demanded an audience, and it was in consequence of this
request that he, in his turn, became acquainted with the new Imperial
etiquette and new Imperial jargon towards the representatives of
Sovereigns. On the same evening the Nuncio expedited a courier to Rome,
and I have heard to-day that the nomination of Miollis is confirmed by
the Pope.

From this relatively trifling occurrence, His Holiness might judge of the
intention of our Government to adhere to its other engagements; but at
Rome, as well as in most other Continental capitals, the Sovereign is the
dupe of the perversity of his Counsellors and Ministers, who are the
tools, and not seldom the pensioners, of the Cabinet of St. Cloud.

But in the kingdom of Italy the parishes and dioceses are, if possible,
still worse served than in this country. Some of the Bishops there,
after having done duty in the National Guards, worn the Jacobin cap, and
fought against their lawful Prince, now live in open adultery; and, from
their intrigues, are the terror of all the married part of their flock.
The Bishop of Pavia keeps the wife of a merchant, by whom he has two
children; and, that the public may not be mistaken as to their real
father, the merchant received a sum of money to establish himself at
Brescia, and has not seen his wife for these two years past. General
Gourion, who was last spring in Italy, has assured me that he read the
advertisement of a curate after his concubine, who had eloped with
another curate; and that the Police Minister at Milan openly licensed
women to be the housekeepers of priests.

A grand vicar, Sarini, at Bologna, was, in 1796, a friar, but
relinquished then the convent for the tent, and exchanged the breviary
for the musket. He married a nun of one cloister, from whom he procured
a divorce in a month, to unite himself with an Abbess of another,
deserted by him in her turn for the wife of an innkeeper, who robbed and
eloped from her husband. Last s