offer to rise, the Cardinal d'Est was so good as to let me
alone. His Holiness gave me an audience of four hours, condescended to
beg my forgiveness for not having acted with more vigour for my liberty;
and said, with tears in his eyes: "God forgive those who delayed to give
me timely notice of your imprisonment, and who made us believe that you
had been guilty, of an attempt upon the King's person. The Sacred
College took fire at the news; but the French Ambassador being at
liberty, to give out what he chose, because nobody, appeared here on your
part to contradict him, Mazarin extinguished it, and half the Sacred
College thought you were abandoned by the whole kingdom." In short, the
Pope was so well disposed to me that he thought of adopting me as his
nephew, but he sickened soon after and died.

The conclave chose Cardinal Chigi (who was called Alexander VIII.) for
his successor, in whose election I had such a share that when it came to
my turn, at the adoration of the cardinals, to kiss his feet, he embraced
me, saying, "Signor Cardinal de Retz, 'ecce opus manuum tuarum'" ("Behold
the work of your own hands"). I went home accompanied with one hundred
and twenty coaches of gentlemen, who did not doubt that I should govern
the Pontificate.

My friends in France, who commonly judge of other nations by their own,
imagined that a persecuted cardinal might, nay, ought to live like a
private man even at Rome, and advised me not to spend much money, because
my revenues in France were all seized, and said that such exemplary
modesty would have an admirable effect upon the clergy of Paris. But
Cardinal Chigi talked after another manner: "When you are reestablished
in your see you may live as you please, because you will be in a country
where everybody will know what you are or are not able to do. You are
now at Rome, where your enemies say every day that you have lost your
credit in France, and you are under a necessity to make it appear that
what they say is false. You are not a hermit, but a cardinal, and a
cardinal, too, of the better rank. At Rome there are many people who
love to tread upon men when they are down. Dear sir, take care you do
not fall, and do but consider what a figure you will make in the streets
with six vergers attending you; otherwise every pitiful citizen of Paris
that meets you will be apt to jostle you, in order to make his court to
the Cardinal d'Est. You ought not to have come to Rome