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of France. Though D'Aubeterre suggested to De Bernis Ganganelli as the greatest theologian and casuist, who best could resolve the question as to the legality of a covenant for the destruction of the Jesuits, he by no means felt confident that the decision would be in his favour. Ganganelli's calm prudence baffled De Bernis; he would not be the tool of his intrigues. Early in the affair De Bernis writes

Si Ganganelli n'avait pas tant de peur de se nuire en paraissant lié avec les couronnes, il y aurait pour moi plus de ressources en lui qu'en tout autre; mais cela ne se peut plus; à force de finesse il gâte ses affaires; mais il a été accoutumé à cette conduite dans son cloître, et il a peur de son ombre; c'est dommage.-P. 222.

Again, on April 20, De Bernis has a little secret coquetry (galanterie sourde) with Ganganelli, who promises his voice— but, in the meantime, to keep up appearances, votes on the other side. He does not like the manner in which my colleagues conduct their negotiations, but professes great esteem for me' (p. 228). When Ganganelli, among others, is proposed for pope, De Bernis says that he is feared, but not of sufficient consideration' (p. 230). Much later he writes, "One must have great faith to feel sure that Ganganelli is with us. He wraps himself up in impenetrable mystery.' To pass over some circumstances, hereafter to be noticed-to the last De Bernis found Ganganelli calm and cold, promising nothing, entering into no engagement.

But how were the Zelanti, the Albanis, and their party induced to vote for Ganganelli? De Bernis roundly asserts that it was the pistoles of Spain which wrought this change; that more than once the Albani had made advances of the kind to him (se sont jetés cent fois à ma tête); but as he (Bernis) had no money to offer, he was obliged to content himself with keeping on good terms with them. 'L'argent comptant vaut mieux que toute chose. toute chose. Si l'Espagne s'attache les Albani par de bonnes pensions, elle sera la maîtresse de ce pays-ci.' He adds that if Azparu has not come down with large sums and still larger promises, the Spaniards will, after all, be duped;

that the Albani will only vote for Ganganelli after having obtained positive assurances for the maintenance of the Society. M. Crétineau Joly assures us, indeed, that De Bernis himself utterly destroys these odious suspicions thrown out against the Albani; but all that De Bernis says is, that they had made their own arrangements with Ganganelli.' Of these arrangements, if made, it is clear that the French Cardinal was not in the secret; and as though M. Crétineau Joly were conscious of the weakness of his case, with regard to this supposed retractation of the charge of bribery by Bernis, he suddenly bewilders his reader at this very instant with a clever irreverent letter of Voltaire, which might have come in anywhere else quite as well. By thus shocking the religious, and diverting the profane, the attention of each class of readers is withdrawn from the grave question stirred. Bernis' wounded vanity may indeed have ascribed to these coarse means the success of the Spaniards in an affair in which he himself had failed; he may have been ambitious of having it in his power to distribute large sums of money, and to make magnificent offers; and he may have estimated too highly the influence which he would have obtained by such advantages. Still, whatever may be the truth of the charge, it remains uncontradicted as far as Bernis is concerned. But of all improbable solutions of this difficulty, the most improbable is that these subtle and suspicious and experienced conclavists were themselves overreached by Ganganelli, and persuaded by a few careless and doubtful sentences dropped at random, that he was a Jesuit at heart. The Albani must have known that the Spaniards were negotiating with Ganganelli, as well well as Ganganelli and the Frenchman knew that negotiations were going on between them and the Spaniards. The two significant sentences which are supposed to prove Ganganelli's duplicity are these:-To one party he said, 'The arms of the Bourbon princes are very long, they reach over the Alps and the Pyrenees.' To the other he said. (M. Crétineau Joly of course adds, in tones of perfect sincerity'), 'Destroy the Company of Jesus! you might as well

think of overturning the dome of St. Peter's. Moreover the Cardinal Castelli is reported to have heard Ganganelli say on one occasion, 'I will never vote for Stoppani; if he were Pope, he would oppress the Jesuits.' And we are to suppose that Castelli, the chief of the fanatics,' was suddenly converted by these words into a partisan of Ganganelli.

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III. But after all (and this is the main question), was Ganganelli a Jesuit in his heart and conscience; and did he wrench. that heart from its dominant inclination, and sell that conscience for the Papal tiara? All the proofs on one side are, a formal oration which in his younger days he made on some commemoration festival, in which he spoke handsomely of the learning and depth of some of the great Jesuit writers; his elevation to the Cardinalate by Clement XIII., who was completely under the influence of Ricci, general of the Jesuits; his habitual civility to the Jesuits wherever he encountered them; the perplexities of Bernis, which we have already described; and those loose sayings ascribed to him during the conclave. These vague proofs are crowned by a passage from a manuscript history by the Jesuit Cordara, whose wish,' we may not unreasonably conclude, was father to his thought.' But even Cordara admits that the world in general considered Ganganelli opposed to the Jesuits. To these few and trivial facts are opposed the character of the man; his Order, which in many of the missions had come into hostile collision with that of Jesus; his reputation, which from the first pointed him out as one of those who might be promoted by the anti-Jesuit interest; above all his prospective views, which manifestly had foreseen that the old ultramontane government of the world by terror alone, by the terror of interdict and anathema, had passed away; that unless Catholicism, unless Christianity could attach mankind by the cords of love, its day was gone. These views implied the most profound confidence, rather than cowardly mistrust, in the promises of God to the Church at large, or in those special promises which the Roman Catholic believes to have been made to St. Peter, and through him to the bishops

of Rome. There was, moreover, one act of Ganganelli-an act acknowledged by M. Crétineau Joly, and by all who are hostile to the memory of Clement XIV.-which seems to us conclusive as to his previous anti-Jesuitism. He it was who had succeeded the Cardinal Passionei in conducting the proceedings for the canonization of Palafox, bishop of Puebla. But this canonization, pertinaciously opposed during many years by the whole Jesuit interest, was by all the world considered as a direct and positive condemnation of the Order, who were asserted to have persecuted that blameless bishop to his dying bed. It was to them a question of life and death; Ganganelli's voluntary undertaking of this cause, therefore, was little less than an open declaration of war against them. On the whole, then, we can have no doubt that Ganganelli was, ab initio, in his heart convinced of the justice, the policy, the wisdom of the suppression of the Jesuits, though from prudential motives, perhaps from the gentleness of his temper, he abstained from betraying those views more than was necessary; and when the time for action was come, shuddered and recoiled at the difficult taskone which it would have required a far different cast of mind to accomplish without fear, without doubt, without regret.

The end of a Papal election usually throws the population of Rome into a state of tumultuous exultation: Clement, on his accession, was hailed with a perfect frenzy of joy. This M. Crétineau Joly describes, interspersing covert allusions to more recent rejoicings on the election of a liberal Pope, and solemn and ominous warning of the fickleness of the Roman people, and the instability of this kind of popularity.

Count St. Priest condemns severely the weakness and irresolution of Clement XIV., who delayed for three years the great work of his pontificate. Ganganelli shrunk before the magnitude of his task-the utter extinction of an Order which had been approved by so many Popes, had the Council of Trent in its favour, and was still considered by friends and foes the Janissary force of the Papal power. Far,' says the count, 'from displaying that inflexibility, that unshaken firmness,

ascribed to him by his enemies and his panegyrists, he resolved to temporize, to amuse the sovereigns by promises, to restrain the Jesuits by premeditated hesitations; in a word, to elude rather than brave the danger. From this day he devoted his pontificate to all the subterfuges and all the artifices of a laborious feebleness.' Our reader will find the history of all these transactions told with admirable brevity, spirit, and truth in M. St. Priest's fourth chapter. Nothing can be more striking than the development of Clement's character-his conduct to Bernis-his happiness when for a short time relieved from the intolerable burden of immediate decision-his struggles in the inflexible grasp of Florida Blanca. But M. St. Priest has hardly made allowance for the difficulties of Clement's position. The sovereigns and their agents were for forcing the measure with immediate, indecent haste: Clement had stipulated from the first that the affair should proceed legally; he would act slowly, canonically, charitably. Giving him credit for having conscientiously determined to keep his positive or implied promise, under the full conviction that the peace of the Church required the dissolution of the Order, it is hardly surprising that he should have been perplexed as to the safest and least offensive means of achieving his design. He had hardly any one to consult; his private friends, two good simple Franciscans, could give him no assistance in such perilous questions. The Cardinals were hostile; he felt himself obliged to withdraw from their councils: the ambassadors, till he had made a friend of Bernis, were for driving him on with headlong, merciless, cruel precipitancy. His caution may have led to more than the proverbial tardiness of proceedings at Rome, his irresolution may have been weakness, he may have yielded too much to his fears; according to Bernis, from the day of his elevation he had a dread of poison. But the justice and gentleness of his character were perhaps more embarrassing than his scruples or his timidity. The measure could not be accomplished without inflicting much suffering without wounding the most tender and sacred feelings of many who

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