its not having fallen was the strongest proof of its vital power,
and the absolute necessity for the existence of the system. That the
system, notwithstanding its occasional disorders, went on. Popes and
cardinals might prey upon its bowels, and sell its interests, but the
system survived. The cutting off of this or that member was not able to
cause Rome any vital loss; for, as soon as she lost a member, the loss
was supplied by her own inherent vitality; though her Popes had been
poisoned by cardinals, and her cardinals by Popes, and though priests
occasionally poisoned Popes, cardinals and each other, after all that had
been and might be, she had still, and would ever have, her priests,
cardinals, and pope.

Finding the man in black so communicative and reasonable, I determined to
make the best of my opportunity, and learn from him all I could with
respect to the papal system, and told him that he would particularly
oblige me by telling me who the Pope of Rome was, and received for answer
that he was an old man elected by a majority of cardinals to the papal
chair; who, immediately after his election, became omnipotent and equal
to God on earth. On my begging him not to talk such nonsense, and asking
him how a person could be omnipotent who could not always preserve
himself from poison, even when fenced round by nephews, or protected by a
bustling woman, he, after taking a long sip of hollands and water, told
me that I must not expect too much from omnipotence. For example, that
as it would be unreasonable to expect that One above could annihilate the
past--for instance, the Seven Years' War, or the French
Revolution--though anyone who believed in Him would acknowledge Him to be
omnipotent, so would it be unreasonable for the faithful to expect that
the Pope could always guard himself from poison. Then, after looking at
me for a moment stedfastly and taking another sip, he told me that Popes
had frequently done impossibilities. For example, Innocent the Tenth had
created a nephew; for, not liking particularly any of his real nephews,
he had created the said Camillo Astalli his nephew; asking me, with a he!
he! 'What but omnipotence could make a young man nephew to a person to
whom he was not in the slightest degree related?' On my observing that
of course no one believed that the young fellow was really the Pope's
nephew, though the Pope might have adopted him as such, the man in black
replied, 'that the reali