Marian Mount, and I repeat it here, that you may serve the great end of my life, and through me, Italy. But remember, you risk your head in it. I know that Italy is not wanting in warm hearts, fiery and generous spirits, that abhor the Austrian, and are ready to die for Italian independence. They are the men of whom I would make my Macedonian phalanx. Will you lend me your aid in seeking them? But here metaphors are superfluous: I will explain myself clearly," and laying on the table a pontifical decree, recently fabricated in the sanguinary dens of the Vatican, he read from it these words, 'Shall be punished with death, as guilty of high treason, whoever shall be surprised in a meeting of the Carbonari.' Now, do you understand me?" "I begin to comprehend.-Go on!" "I have but one word more to add: will you, after this, become a Carbonaro? That is what I ask of you.' "And what do you ask of them?" "Assistance and allegiance." "And in return, what do you promise them?" "The Italian Crusade against Austria." "And you have chosen me as your secret Ambassador, your interpreter amongst them?" "Yes; but reflect well upon it; behind is the scaffold. Speak of yourself and of them, not of me. I know their number and power. They must accept me as their candidate for the tiara, and support me by every method. Formerly the people of Vitabe compelled by their energy the election of Gregory the Tenth. A demonstration of the Carbonari might, in despair of the cause, compel mine, and intimidate the Conclave by dictating the law to it." "Alphonzo Petrucci brought about the election of Leo the Tenth by a popular shout, and Leo the Tenth strangled Alphonzo Petrucci in the Castle of Saint Angelo. That, my lord, is what the Carbonari would reply to me.' "But yourself, Anselm, do you not believe in my word, in my oath ?" "I believe in them, but they do not know you that they may believe in you, Have they heard you this evening swear upon the crucifix? Were they yesterday at the Marian Mount ?" "It is for you, Anselm, to carry conviction into their minds. If it be in yours, it will be transfused into theirs. Trust me, faith is electric; it is contagious; it is gained by language." “May God, then, give me a golden tongue, that I may persuade them; from this moment I am a Carbonari, and swear fidelity to you." "But," resumed the Cardinal, “have you the means to penetrate into the sittings of the Carbonari?” "I will find them, my lord; that is my concern." "Go then, generous spirit! You will find your fellow in those subterranean camps of the proscribed and decimated, whither I send you as a hostage. If I have waited long-if the wheel of Fortune have turned slowly for me, my day is at length arrived. Sixtus the Fifth is going to throw away his crutch." Suddenly there was a violent knocking at the door of the cloister, and a monk rushed into the cell." My lord, the Camerlingue," said he, gasping for breath, "apprises your Highness that the POPE IS DEAD!" So saying, he went out. "The Pope is dead!" exclaimed Anselm and the Cardinal both at once. "Dead!" repeated the Cardinal, and he fainted away. The bell of the capitol pealing the mighty tidings, restored him to life. My lord!" said Anselm to him with emotion, "do you hear that bell? It is the alarm bell of the Italian Crusade!" "Already!" replied the Cardinal, reopening his eyes, and so near the end, he forgot his forty years of expectation. "At length!" said he, after a silence, and he appeared to breathe more freely. Completely himself again, he took Anselm's hand affectionately, and added with solemnity-" That bell is a bell from heaven; it is the peal of triumph or of death; the hand of God is now at this instant preparing in obscurity a throne or a scaffold." 66 Perhaps both," interrupted Anselm; "but his will be done! Let us think of the throne first, and the scaffold may come afterwards!" "And you fearlessly plunge your hand into the fatal urn? If you should draw out black, Anselm ?" "Well, my lord, I should go to rejoin the Gracchi, Crescentius the consul, Arnold of Bresica, the tribune Rienji, and all the martyrs for Roman liberty. "Happy are the young!" exclaimed the old man; "it is a blessed age that can join to such carelessness such intrepidity and confidence." The deep-toned bell of the capitol continued to sound, filling the air with its iron voice. But it was not long heard alone; starting to life at its call, every bell in Rome replied to it, and the hun dred and fifty churches of the Holy City blended all their voices in one vast nocturnal concert, without an equal in the world. Invited by so many summonses to the mortuary festival, the people poured by torrents into the streets; they overflowed in the public squares, and joined their mighty voice to that of all the others."The Pope is dead!-The Pope is dead!" This funeral shout rode on the whirlwind, and beat as a mighty wave against the cell and the heart of the Sicilian; then the hurricane carried it off in its aerial gust, and it was lost in the tempest: but the tempest was fertile; it kindled in passing the ambition of the living from the dust of the dead, erecting a throne upon a coffin. A long silence prevailed in the cell; it was broken by Anselm. "My lord," said he, "our bark is afloat, launched a month before the hour! It is for us now to guide it through the storm." You are my pilot," replied the Sicilian; and after renewing their oaths, they separated. CHAPTER III. THE CONCLAVE. THE great bell of the capitol, which announced to the Roman people and to Christendom the death of the pontifking, pealed for nine days and nine nights: the funeral season was spent in prayers, in chantings, and in plots; theatres, courts of law, universities-all at Rome were suspended; for, with the pope, expires every office, all business, and pleasure. The theocratic sovereignty returns to the bosom of the sacred college; but until its entire re-union, the head of the state is the Cardinal Camerlingue. Pope for the interregnum, he takes possession of the pontifical palace, and coins money, with his name and family arms-more than one of their highnesses are said to have profited largely by the days of sovereignty. The pope was dead! deceiving by a month the augury of medicine and policy. Abruptly roused from her inertia, the Holy City was all in action; with a restless, but frivolous movement of routine. People went and came; groups by thousands, darkened the squares; artizans, princes, merchants, and monks; English, French, Russians, and men of all nations, buzzed confusedly in the streets. Three-cornered hats, and shop keepers of London, were in the majority Forgotten before he was cold, the dead pontiff was only called to mind by some ferocious pasquinade; and burning with hope, ambition, and uncertainty, every imagination turned towards the future pontiff, as iron to the magnet. The solemnities of the nine days concluded, the Conclave opened, but in the absence of some expected foreign cardinals, the business transacted during the first week, was merely nominal. It was the season of the mal'aria, which, during the summer heats, passes the walls of the Holy City, and invades even to the dwelling of the sovereign Pontiff; and the Conclave had met in the more airy and healthy palace of the Quirinal. But strictly cloistered within the four walls of their narrow and hot cells, the holy electors had very little enjoyment of its spacious and splendid apartments, and cool and delightful gardens. or The captives were, however, numerous; for the Conclave was a little world of itself. Physicians, chamberlains, apothecaries, barbers,-nothing was wanting; for each of their highnesses had in attendance for the use of his body, soul, and spirit, a chamberlain, secretary, and confessor. Once locked in, the members of the Conclave cannot go out again; if they do, it must be to return no more. It is only the election of the pope, that can restore them to the open air and to liberty. The police of the place is entrusted to a high lay officer, who bears the military title of Marshal of the Conclave. He resides in the palace, of which he has the keys; and to him belongs the right to open or shut the prison. The doors are guarded by Swiss. The marshal is aided in his functions of gaoler by the first conservator of the Roman people, who is the true Cerberus of the place. It is he who searches, or is supposed to search, the persons of all who enter, as he is supposed to search the contents of the pâtés and chickens that figure on the tables of the electors; for the dinner of the cardinals is not prepared in the palace, but is sent to them, ready-dressed. Every day at noon, the ceremony of the ever-blessed dinners commences; locked in a box, with the colours of the master, it is pompously carried on a litter of the same colour, by two servants in state liveries. Two footmen open the procession, bearing canes; and empty or full, the carriage of his highress closes the cortège. The heavy magnificence of these cardinalic carriages is one of the curiosities of Rome. Painted purple, the sacramental colour, and surmounted at the four corners by massive ornaments, of purple also, they are gorgeous with heavy gildings, armorial bearings, and pictures, often rather profane; the gayest bordered by Venuses, and little dancing loves, beneath wreaths of roses. Every day these gothic convoys, destined for the service of the belligerent armies of the Holy Spirit, peaceably parade through the streets, and stop in procession at the entrance in the field of battle. As dear admirers of sights as their ancestors, the Romans have a decided fancy for this gastronomic ceremony, and rarely fail to line at noon the avenues to, and besiege the doors of the Conclave. Another ceremony in equal estimation, is what is called at Rome, la Fumata: it is as follows:-The electors have a scrutiny twice a day, in the morning and afternoon; a formality that is renewed so long as no candidate has obtained twothirds of the votes; the lowest number to secure an election. Until that event, the votes are burnt, and the smoke of the sacred paper escapes by an iron tube exposed to public gaze. This is what is called la Fumata. At eleven and five, the crowd on foot press around the mysterious palace, with eyes fixed on the prophetic tube, as the mariner on his compass, to await their destiny: if the smoke issue, the pope is to be chosen; if it do not, he is chosen. But this is not, as the procession of the dinners, an idle and childish ceremony. The states of the church are, in temporalities, under a pure and absolute despotism; so the choice of the sovereign is important to each, as it affects him individually. He is above the laws; he is himself the living law; he reverses sentences; annuls or overrules decrees; and can, on his own authority, without even consulting the creditor, release a debtor from his debt, whatever it may be, by a simple order; an iniquitous favour that may indefinitely, and in contempt of all justice, be renewed every six years, for the benefit of a protégé; hence it may easily be imagined, with what feverish impatience and throbbing of the heart, all classes of the Roman populace interrogate the augural Fumata. As to the captives, their chain is short, and sufficiently heavy. Old and ailing, they regret their luxuries and palaces; and when, after long intrigues and many stratagems, the Conclave was still prolonged, they often suddenly agreed to fix upon the first name that should come out. A private entrance is appropriated to the ambassadors, who come in great pomp to present their credentials to the sacred college. The presiding cardinals are three in number, and are changed every morning. Every day before the first scrutiny, the mass of the Holy Ghost is celebrated in the chapel of the Conclave; and after dinner, the Veni Creator Spiritus is loudly chanted: the simple meaning of which is-Gentlemen, make haste; for all these superanuated pomps are now, as says the apostle, but sounding brass, and tinkling cymbals. The old electoral machine of this sacerdotal Poland, rolls now upon the veto of the catholic powers, France, Austria, Spain, and Portugal, who all four enjoy in the Conclave the privilege of exclusion that is to say, each may reject the candidate he deems inimical to his interests. Thus Europe presides at the Conclave, and every one is master there, except the cardinals. As the veto can only be exercised once, the talent of the parties consists in neutralizing it, and making it fall upon a head that it was well known could never wear the tiara. They usually commence on either side, by bringing forward some cardinal too decidedly compromised in the eyes of foreign courts, either by birth, or political feelings, and upon whom the exclusion must of necessity descend. But the foreign diplomacy are all on their guard they are in constant intelligence with the sacred college; for the marshal of the Conclave does not keep his gaol so strictly, or search so deeply into the apostolic provisions, but that notes are exchanged daily between the princes of the church, and the hotels of earthly potentates. The result of these manœuvres is generally the same; it may be considered certain that a party candidate will never succeed. Balancing between one and another, the triple crown generally falls unexpectedly upon` some insignificant person, of whom no one at first had thought: for, as Cardinal Petralia said to Anselm, the tiara no longer binds any but neutral brows. Thence the adage-he who enters the Conclave pope, will go out cardinal,— and therefore, the constant care of the Sicilian to enter the Conclave cardinal, to go out pope. He had no party; he was not the client of any ultra-montane court; therefore, as he had not to fear the veto of any, he was nearer the throne than any of their candidates. He was, however, the candidate of the Roman people: his name was great on the Seven Hills; and where he had scattered ten in alms and consolations, he had reaped a thousandfold in love and veneration; for the people are not ungrateful. The Czar, being a heretic prince, had neither veto, nor official voice in the Conclave, but his political influence in the Vatican was not the less for that; hence Cardinal Petralia depended more upon the oblique insinuations of this northern prince, than on the dangerous support of their most faithful majesties. The Sicilian had the promise of the Muscovite; not certainly that the Muscovite cared for the pope, as pilot of the bark of St. Peter, but he cared for the pope, as an Italian prince; and in this, he was with every one else, the dupe of the high penitentiary. He likewise counted him an anchorite; and as an interested patron, reckoned upon reward for his services, by reaping the benefit of the political incapacity of his crowned client. In this lay the secret of the protection of this distant power; which was the most active and intriguing in the pious comedy of the Quirinal. His mines thus disposed, the Sicilian had not slumbered in the arms of hope; but had foreseen every chance. Calculating the possibility of a reverse, he had had recourse, as a last alternative, to the Carbonari. He was thoroughly acquainted man by man, with every member of the sacred college; he was not ignorant that such was the feebleness of these decrepid old men, that an armed rising on the Quirinal, to the shout of Cardinal Petralia for ever! would compel, in case of need, his election; but this was only an extreme and desperate resource. Anselm, whom the cardinal had commissioned as his agent with the Carbonari, was himself, unknown to the Cardinal, the head of the Carbonari, presided in their sittings as grand master of the order, and held in his hand the strings of a mighty confederacy, that, organized in the heart of the Holy City, extended its occult but powerful agency to the remotest hamlet in the peninsula. Hence the animated and confident support promised by Anselm to the cardinal, in the conversation of the cell. The cardinal punctually attended the formality of the scrutiny, and the ceremonies of the chapel. Though a dominant party to every plot, he preserved his patient self-collection, and appeared to enter into none, but gave his vote to each ultra-candidate, well persuaded he had nothing to fear from his rivalry. The thought of the papacy inflamed his imagination; the sacred diadem glowed before his eyes, and the tempest of ambition was rife within him; but to see him slowly and collectedly move along, his monastic robe sweeping the pavement of the Pauline chapel; to see him avoiding intrigue and faction, and indifferently voting first for one, then for another, the Conclave persisted in regarding him as a saint, incompetent for terrestrial affairs, and absorbed in heavenly contemplations. His severe renunciation was edifying, and they repeated with the pious Pasquin: Si Sanctus oret pro nobis, si doctus doce et nos; and of the sixty cardinals of the sacred college, not one had ever thought of giving him a vote. And thou! oh strong man! thou didst see all these things, and rejoice at them. Intrigues followed their course, and became daily more energetic, in proportion as the foreign cardinals arrived at the Conclave; but skirmishes only had as yet taken place, and the august assembly waited for the decisive stroke, the arrival of the Austrian cardinal, bearing the imperial veto. At length he came: he spent one whole day with the ambassador of his court, and they concerted together their plan of attack and defence. The secrets of the Trastenerin cloister, the residence of Cardinal Petralia, filled an important place in the mysterious conference. The second day, the subtle Austrian pursued with his suite the way to the Quirinal. He was received at the outer gate by the Marshal with military honours, and in the Conclave, by the cardinal presidents; his highness took possession of the cell destined to him by lot, and his entrance was the signal for commencing the battle. (Concluded at page 403). INSECTS OF A DAY. (Translated from the French.) CICERO speaks of insects on the banks of the river Hypanis, the extent of whose life is one day. He amongst them who dies at five in the morning, dies in his youth; he who lives to five in the evening, dies in his decrepitude. Supposing one of the most robust of these Hypanians to be as ancient as time itself, in the estimation of his compatriots, he would have commenced his existence at daybreak, and, by the extraordinary strength of his constitution, have sustained an active life throughout the infinite number of moments of ten or twelve hours. During this long succession of instants, by experience and reflection upon what he has seen, he will have acquired great wisdom; he sees his fellows dying around him at noon-day, as creatures happily freed from the many inconveniences attendant upon old age. He relates to his grandchildren marvellous traditions of facts anterior to the memory of the whole nation. The young swarm, composed of beings who may perhaps have already lived an hour, respectfully approach the elder, and listen with admiration to his instructive conversation. Everything he recites will appear a prodigy to a generation whose life is so short. The space of a day will appear to them as the entire duration of time, as comprising the length of his scroll, and the number of his sands; and the early twilight, in their chronology, be recalled as the great era of creation. ; Let us suppose, now, this venerable insect, this Nestor of the Hypanians, a little before his death, and about the hour of the going down of the sun, assembling together around him his family, friends, and acquaintances, to communicate to them his last instructions, and to give them his death-bed experience. They repair from all parts to his abode, under the spacious shelter of a mushroom, and the departing sage addresses them in something of the following style : "Friends and fellow-countrymen! I am sensible that the longest life must have its conclusion. The limit of mine is attained; I regret not my destiny, since my great age is a sore burden for me, and there is nothing new remaining for me beneath the sun. The revolutions and calamities that have laid waste my country, the innumerable accidents to which we are individually liable, the infirmities that afflict our species, and the misfortunes that have occurred in my own family, all that I have seen in the course of my long life, have but too clearly taught me this great truththat no happiness placed in things without ourselves, can be certain or permanent. A whole generation have perished by an east wind; a multitude of our adventurous youth have been swept away in the water by a sudden breeze. What dreadful deluges have we not witnessed from a hasty shower! Even the most solid habitations are not always proof against a storm of hail. A dark cloud passing, has struck terror into the stoutest hearts. "I have lived in earlier ages, and conversed with insects of a more powerful organization, of stronger constitution, and, I may say, of loftier wisdom than those of the present generation. I entreat you to give credence to my last words, when I affirm, that the sun which now stands on the verge of the ocean, and seems almost to touch the earth, I saw formerly fixed in the centre of the sky, and pouring down its beams directly upon us. In the remote periods of which I speak, the world was brighter, the air warmer and healthier, and our ancestors more temperate and virtuous. He "Although my powers fail me, my memory does not; and I assure you that this glorious star has motion. I saw his early ascent over the brow of yonder mountain, and I began my existence about the same period when he commenced his mighty course. has kept through the lapse of time his onward career, rising high in the heavens with a prodigious heat, and a radiant glory such as you can have no idea of, and which your frame undoubtedly would not have been able to sustain; but now, in his decline and sensible diminution of vigour, I foresee the approaching extinction of nature, and am persuaded that this goodly earth itself will soon be wrapped in a veil of darkness. "Alas, my friends! how often did I not formerly flatter myself with the vain hope of making an eternal habitation of this green earth! how magnificent were the subterranean abodes I excavated for myself! what confidence I placed in the strength of my limbs, the elasticity of my joints, and the buoyancy of my wings! But I have lived enough for nature and for glory, nor will a single one of those whom I leave around me experience an equal satisfaction in the gloomy and degenerate age now commencing!" A NEAT VICE VERSA. B. E. M. AN elderly French gentleman being at a dinner-table in London, concluded a long harangue about Cupid and Psyche, by pronouncing oracularly, "l'amour fait passer le temps;" to which an English lady replied, with a ready inversion of the phrase, that seemed particularly approved by the rest of the company, " Et le temps fait passer l'amour.” B.E. M. |