Mrs. Hugh Fraser

Lebzeltern, the Ambassador of the Austrian Emperor—Origin of His Mission—Napoleon’s Anger Against Pius VII—Arrest of the Pope—Protests from the Church—Napoleon Excommunicated—Vain Efforts to Evade the Bull—Instructions for the Mission—“Do All, or Else, Do Nothing”—Pius VII in His Sixty-eighth Year—The Interview—The Pope’s Position—His Generosity—Message to Napoleon—Continued Captivity—Return to Rome—Napoleon’s Expiation.

One beautiful evening of early summer in the year 1810, the packet-boat plying between Genoa and Savona reached the latter port after a fair but exciting passage; for, albeit the sea was scarcely ruffled by the breeze—which in itself was barely sufficient to fill the sails—yet during the whole of the voyage from Genoa a couple of British frigates had accompanied the packet-boat, keeping however, much to the surprise of the voyagers, at a considerable distance and without manifesting any hostile intention. And when, at last, the packet-boat was safe at anchor in the harbour of Savona, the frigates likewise lay to, within about a cannon-shot of the land, and began, apparently, to make all snug for the night.

Among the passengers who now walked down the gang-plank of the packet-boat on to the quay, thankful for once to British eccentricity for its unaccountable generosity in letting them go their way unmolested, was a man, still young, with an expression of imperturbable good-nature not unmixed with a certain bland shrewdness. This person, after directing a servant, by whom he was accompanied, to have his baggage taken to an hotel—possibly the “Roma”—betook himself alone and on foot to the “Vescovado,” the palace of the Bishop of Savona, “a fairly large house,” as Napoleon had described it in a letter in which he had attempted to excuse himself for the choice of it as a residence for his prisoner, Pope Pius VII.

The traveller, on arriving at the door of the Vescovado, found his further way barred by a couple of gendarmes who were mounting guard there; to them, on their asking his business, he replied that he desired an interview with the Sovereign Pontiff, and requested that they would let him pass. For all answer they stared at him, open-mouthed, taking him for an eccentric; when their commander, a Colonel ThÉvenot, who chanced to be passing, took the matter out of their hands.

“Who are you, sir, and what do you want?” he enquired.

“I wish to see the Holy Father, as soon as possible,” replied the other. “Allow me”—handing the Colonel a visiting card inscribed:

“Le Chevalier de Lebzeltern,
Conseiller d’Ambassade
de
Sa MajestÉ l’Empereur d’Autriche et Roi
Apostolique de Hongrie.”

Having read the card, ThÉvenot glanced suspiciously at the owner of it; then, seeing that he had indeed to do with a serious person, he turned rather red in the face.

“Tut-tut, my dear sir, surely you cannot expect to obtain admission to the Pope in this rough-and-ready way,” he stammered. “It is really quite out of the question, you know,” with a wave of the hand to where, in the courtyard, a corporal’s guard of fusiliers was preparing to relieve the sentries posted in all the approaches of the building.

“Ah, the guard of honour, I suppose, for His Holiness,” returned the Austrian, with the vestige of a smile; whereat Colonel ThÉvenot’s equanimity gave way.

“Frankly, sir,” he broke out, “please understand that no living being is allowed to enter here without a written order from General Berthier, the commandant of the town.”

“Frankly, sir,” retorted Lebzeltern in his turn, “that does not apply to myself, and I am going to enter.”

Happily for all concerned, the situation was dispelled at that moment by the sound of heavy firing from the direction of the harbour, where the British frigates had suddenly come in closer towards the town in the intention of ascertaining the range of the French artillery, especially of some large cannon on a new fort. The orders of Napoleon himself, who was acquainted with this custom of the British, were positive in regard to such provocations; and it was strictly enjoined upon his officers to take no notice of them except in the event of a serious attack. Nevertheless, the garrison of Savona lost its head upon this particular occasion and opened an extensive fire upon the two inquisitive ships. As Lebzeltern described it:

In the confusion of what the French imagined to be the preliminaries of an action, the gates of the Vescovado were closed, and Lebzeltern, thus forced to abandon his quest for the moment, turned his footsteps towards the hotel. There was nothing for it, as he saw, but to obtain General Berthier’s permission to see the Pope, with whom alone his mission to Savona was concerned. Having dined, therefore, he despatched a messenger to the Papal “maestro di camera,” Monsignor Doria, bearing a letter from Count Metternich, the Austrian Ambassador in Paris, under whose instructions he was acting, together with a formal request for an audience of the Holy Father.

Some explanation is necessary of the origin of Lebzeltern’s mission to Savona; and so I trust the reader will not take it amiss if I venture upon the attempt.

When, in the summer of 1809, Napoleon sent orders to Rome for the arrest of the Pope, he did so under the impulse of one of those blind rages of his which upset all the calculations of his wisest advisers, and which only ended in raising up insurmountable barriers in the way of his ultimate triumph. For years he had been angered by the Pope’s refusal either to close the ports of the Papal States against English ships and merchandise, or to expel the English residents in his dominions. In answer to the Emperor’s repeated demands, Pius VII had said that, as the Universal Spiritual Father of all the Christian family, he absolutely refused to close their home and his (i.e., the Papal States) against his English children. Whereupon, in 1807, Benevento and Pontecorvo were taken from the Papal States and erected into French Duchies for Talleyrand and Bernadotte, to be held by them as fiefs of the Empire. The next year, Rome itself was occupied by French troops, and the “legations” of Ancona, Urbino, Macerata, and Camerino seized by Napoleon’s orders; and, in 1809, the Eternal City was declared to be annexed to the Empire as the capital of the French dÉpartement or county of Rome. Finally, in the night of July 5-6, 1809, Pope Pius VII was arrested by General Radet and taken as a prisoner to Savona.

Napoleon’s idea, in thus imprisoning the Pontiff and isolating him from his accustomed friends, counsellors, and surroundings, was to wring from him by suffering that compliance with the imperial diplomacy which the good old man had hitherto refused so uncompromisingly. To be sure, now that Rome and the Papal States were in the hands of his soldiers, the Emperor had no difficulty either in expelling or arresting the English residing there, or in closing the whole of Romagna to British merchandise; but, in his haste and anger, he had reckoned without the religious difficulties of the new situation.

To begin with, in thus laying violent hands upon the person of the Pope, he struck a blow not only at a fellow-Sovereign, but at the Head of the Catholic Church on earth; and, in so doing, wounded the whole of the Church in its tenderest feelings, stirring up against himself a resentment that knew no bounds, not only in France, Belgium, and Italy, but, also, in Spain and Austria; as well as throughout the Catholic parts of Germany and the Netherlands. Protests multiplied on every hand, becoming increasingly violent, until Napoleon was forced to admit to himself that he had made a terrible mistake, and that his glory and power were insufficient to seduce the souls of men from their religious allegiance to the successor of St. Peter. Moreover, the dangers and discomforts of his situation were rendered intolerable by a Bull of Excommunication issued against him in that summer of 1809, in the tour of his triumph over the Austrians at Wagram; which Bull was served upon him in person, whilst surrounded by his marshals, by a solitary ecclesiastic who, true to his mission, did not honour him with any kind of salutation, but merely delivered the parchment into the Emperor’s hand, turned his back upon him, and walked away. Napoleon, indeed, feigned to make light of the excommunication, asking of those about him whether the Pope expected the muskets to fall from the hands of his, the Emperor’s, soldiers; but, in his heart, he was greatly troubled. He had known for some time that such a Bull was on its way to him, but had contrived to evade the service of it on him. For Lebzeltern, himself, who was Secretary of the Austrian Embassy in Rome at the period of the Holy Father’s arrest, and who had long been a valued and intimate friend of Pius VII, had been entrusted with another such document at his departure from Rome on an order transmitted to him from Napoleon through General de Miollis, ordering him (albeit a foreign diplomatist) to quit French territory immediately. Bearing with him, therefore, the Bull of Excommunication, Lebzeltern had departed from Rome, being escorted on his way to Vienna as far as Klagenfurt in Styria by a French officer. On reaching SchÖnbrunn, however, he was arrested by the French military police; his baggage and, even, his person was submitted to a degrading search, and, at length, every other means of purloining the Bull having been tried in vain, Lebzeltern was threatened with being shot unless he gave up the document—for Napoleon would appear to have entertained a superstition that, if only he could escape from having the Bull served on him, its effect would be annulled! But nothing would induce Lebzeltern to reveal its hiding-place; and so he was sent off as a state prisoner to Munich, with a special recommendation to the Bavarian Government to treat him as harshly as possible. Having passed some months there, however, he was exchanged against a Baron d’ArÉtin, and came to Vienna, believing himself to be free at last; but now Wagram had been fought, and Napoleon was master there; and Lebzeltern was again arrested on a trumped-up charge of seeking to escape from giving satisfaction to a French officer in an affair of honour! Nor would Napoleon let him go until compelled to do so by the insistent demands of Metternich, who was just then negotiating the peace preliminaries at Altenburg. At long length, however, Lebzeltern was released, and joined the Austrian headquarters near SchÖnbrunn a few days before the signing of the treaty of Vienna; and it was he to whom Emperor Francis unburdened himself with tears in his eyes on the subject of the Treaty.

Soon afterwards, Lebzeltern went to Paris as Secretary of Embassy under Metternich; and when, in the late spring of 1810, Napoleon asked Metternich to find him a man to entrust with the errand of persuading the Holy Father to accede to his views (i.e., the removal of the Excommunication and the abdication of the Temporal Power in favour of the Napoleonic dynasty), Metternich recommended Lebzeltern as the one person qualified to speak to the Pope with any chance of being accorded a favourable hearing.

The whole hinge of the matter was the Pope’s renunciation of the Temporal Power; only in return for which would Napoleon (as he made perfectly clear to Metternich) allow the Pontiff to return to Rome, whence, alone, it was possible for Pius VII to direct the way of the Catholic Church. And, unless the Pope would surrender the patrimony of Peter, he should never see Rome again; and the Emperor would nominate another Pontiff in his stead. The position was certainly simple enough, according to Napoleon.

But Metternich had added, in private, a little word of his own in the ear of his estimable subordinate on the eve of the latter’s departure for Italy. “Do all,” said he, with a peculiar emphasis, “or else, do nothing.” And Lebzeltern, grasping the significance of the words, had bowed, smilingly, before withdrawing to prepare for the journey. He perfectly understood; what Metternich meant was that he was either to effect “in toto” what both of them knew to be impossible or else he was to effect nothing at all. That is to say, he was not to attempt any compromise by which the Pope might be hoodwinked into doing what Napoleon wanted; for it was perfectly certain that Pius VII would refuse to meet the Emperor’s views as laid down by the Emperor himself for transmission by Lebzeltern. And, as Metternich realised, the salvation, not only of Austria but of all Europe, depended upon the Pope’s holding out against Napoleon; for the only thing that must inevitably, sooner or later, bring about the Emperor’s downfall, was the sense of their outraged religion in the hearts of the vanquished.

After sending in his request for an audience to Monsignor Doria, Lebzeltern went to call upon General Berthier, who was the commandant of Savona and the Pope’s gaoler. Berthier had heard of his arrival, and began by telling Lebzeltern—who had told him that the object of his mission was to discuss some Austrian religious business with the Holy Father—that he could only be allowed to converse with Pius VII in the presence of witnesses. To this Lebzeltern replied that it was impossible for him to speak freely of the affairs of the Austrian Court in the presence of any third party whomsoever; that, according to Napoleon himself, the Pope was under no kind of restraint; and, lastly, that Napoleon both knew and approved of his, Lebzeltern’s, mission. But it was not until Lebzeltern threatened to go back to Paris immediately and to complain of the obstacle placed in his path that Berthier finally surrendered the point—albeit not without a violent scene in which he complained bitterly of the Emperor for placing him (as was true enough) in so equivocal a position by first forbidding him to allow any one to have access to the Pope without direct orders to do so from Paris, and then sending Lebzeltern thus (underhandedly and without as much as a line from any French official excepting a passport) to match, as it were, his, Berthier’s, intelligence against his obedience. Finally, he himself decided to give the preference to his intelligence.

So it was all of four days after his arrival at Savona that Lebzeltern was ushered by Monsignor Doria into the Pope’s presence.

At that time, Pius VII, although in his sixty-eighth year, looked considerably younger, his hair being still jet-black and abundant, and his dark eyes full of life and light. The smile, too, which rarely left his pale, kindly face, was peculiarly winsome in its frankness and its serenity. The only signs about him of what he had endured of late at the hands of the French administration were a weariness in his voice and a marked stoop like that of a very old or very tired man. On seeing Lebzeltern, though, he showed a greater animation and pleasure than he had done for many months; especially was he delighted to learn that their interview was to be an absolutely private one—for this he regarded as a great indulgence on the part of his gaolers, it being the first time in his captivity (then nearly a year old) that he had been allowed to speak with any except in the presence of a third party.

At first, records Lebzeltern, the Holy Father spoke of his sufferings in the journey from Rome and of all he had endured since being torn from the Eternal City; also, he expressed his sympathies for his visitor in what the latter had undergone of unjust imprisonment at the hands of the French and the Bavarians. In return[9] Lebzeltern, as he tells himself, gave the Pontiff an outline of public events since their last meeting in Rome, prior to the battle of Wagram—the Treaty of Vienna and its results; the progress of the war in Portugal; and the marriage of Napoleon to the Archduchess Marie-Louise. All of which events Lebzeltern, a professional diplomatist and an Austrian official, believed to be hitherto unknown to the Pope—wherein lies one of the most curious points of modern history. For, if Pope Pius VII was supposed, even by such men as Metternich and Lebzeltern, to be still, in May, 1810, in ignorance of the marriage of Napoleon to Marie-Louise, how can it be claimed that the Supreme Pontiff’s sanction had ever been given to that marriage? Apparently to Lebzeltern’s surprise, Pius VII had, however, actually learned of the imperial marriage through some secret channel: “... outwitting the watchfulness of his gaolers, he received news day by day...!” For, amongst other indignities, no letters were ever permitted to reach or issue from the Holy Father except such as had been approved by Berthier and by a certain Chabrol, Prefect of the “dÉpartement” of Montenotte, by whom the Papal correspondence was always read and censored; so that it was evidently Napoleon’s purpose to keep his august prisoner in total ignorance of the majority of the world’s events.

Nevertheless, Pius VII spoke with no bitterness, but only with great grief of the French Emperor, expressing the most sorrowful tenderness towards the man whom he had crowned Emperor at Notre Dame a few years previously. And all he asked was that he might be allowed to go back to Rome in order to be able to do his duty by the Church as her Pastor.

At this point Lebzeltern made known the real object of his coming to Savona: namely, that Napoleon was anxious to come to an understanding with the Pope. To the latter this was, indeed, a most welcome surprise; but, almost immediately, he seemed to realise that he was suddenly in the presence of some sort of insidious temptation which was preparing to attack him. And here Lebzeltern, by turning the talk during some minutes to Austrian affairs, sought to give his listener time in which to recover from the first effects of his surprise. And so, for a while, they spoke of the dangers of a schism that threatened the German episcopate, so long deprived by Napoleon of the guidance of their Shepherd. And then, as the Pope began more clearly to divine the probable intentions of the Emperor towards him, he reverted to the subject of his captor:

“I want nothing for myself,” he said, by way of warning Lebzeltern that it would be of no use for him to offer any personal advantage to the Pope (as such) as the price of a reconciliation with Napoleon. “I am old, and have no need of anything; I have sacrificed all I had to my duty. I have nothing left to lose. Therefore, no personal consideration can make me turn aside from the narrow road along which the sacred voice of my conscience has so far led me. I want no pension; the alms of the faithful will suffice me.... All I insist upon—and with all my strength—is that I be allowed free communication with the Bishops and the faithful.” Once, too, he seemed uncertain of even the diplomatist’s own intentions towards him. “At Rome, my dear Lebzeltern,” he reminded him, “I opened my heart to you in the conviction that you were incapable of abusing my confidence ...”—speaking rapidly in Italian.

And now, as Lebzeltern felt, the moment had come when he could no longer defer the revelation of what it was that Napoleon proposed to the Pope as the only possible basis of an agreement between them—that is to say, the only price he would accept to let Pius VII out of prison. It was by no means easy, as he gives one to understand, for the young Austrian to do this thing; but, at length, he forced himself to the point. After assuring the Holy Father once more of his own devotion to him, as well as of that of Metternich and the Emperor Francis, Lebzeltern proceeded to explain that Napoleon had in no way abated his desire to be the lord of Rome, which had long been one of the principal objects of his ambition; also, that he had in no way changed his mind in regard to the Pope’s surrender of the Temporal Power; and that, although Napoleon would not insist upon a formal deed of renunciation on the part of Pius VII, yet, at the same time, he must insist that the Pope should maintain an attitude of absolute submission in the matter, an attitude which should in no way recall the past political position of the Papacy, and which at bottom should be, in fact, an acknowledgment of the suzerainty of the French Emperor.

The words were scarcely out of Lebzeltern’s mouth when the Pontiff took him up with an amazing energy for so delicate a man.

“Is not Napoleon already, de facto, the master of Rome?” he demanded. “Does he not parcel out my States as he pleases? Do not his troops already hold my ports, camp in my capital, and live at my expense? And all I can do is to oppose a few protests to his armed force. But I know him; he is a man who never really wants what he says he wants—and what he really wants he will never admit to a living soul beforehand.”

To which Lebzeltern, in order to restore the Pope’s equanimity, replied by telling him how Metternich, in speaking to Napoleon, had declared himself openly on the side of the Holy Father; and, moreover, had emphatically impressed upon the Emperor the unchangeable principles[10] of the Austrian Government in regard to the Catholic Church and its visible spiritual Head on earth.

“I should indeed be grateful for any help that Austria could give me,” said the Pope. “All I ask is that Napoleon will let me go back to Rome and that he will allow me to keep about me a sufficient number of people for the business of consistories and councils—and that my relations with the faithful may be free and unhampered. I have no means of compelling Napoleon to restore the dominions of which he has robbed me—very well, all I can do is to protest. Beyond that I can do nothing.”

Here Lebzeltern, it must be recorded, made some attempt to persuade the Holy Father to make what he called “sacrifices” in the interests of the distracted Church—but of what nature, precisely, he did not specify. But Pius VII, reading his mind, replied that the duty imposed upon him by his conscience of defending the rights of the Holy See and the patrimony of the Church—which patrimony he was bound by his oath as Pope to transmit intact, in so far as in him lay, to his successors—forbade his remaining silent under Napoleon’s iniquity: his silence would be understood, by his enemies, to be a tacit abdication of the Temporal Power, and would be considered by the faithful as a cowardly surrender.

From this point in the conversation the two men understood each other’s position and standpoint clearly—and yet, both did their best to avoid the blind-alley into which the talk was surely leading them.

“Let Napoleon only allow me to return to Rome,” pleaded the Pope—“the Catacombs will be enough for me, they have served as a shelter before now for other Pontiffs.... As to my sustenance, as I said before, the faithful will take care of it. No doubt Napoleon would offer me a revenue from the funds of the religious orders he has suppressed—in the same way that, when I went to Paris to crown him, he offered me some eighteen or twenty million francs of such stolen money—an unspeakable suggestion which I refused with horror and indignation! But, indeed, now that I think of it—how could I possibly hold my tongue as he proposes I should do, and not protest, while he would go on suppressing convents and religious orders under my very eyes, as well as introducing innovations that I could not pass over in silence without becoming his accomplice in the face of all Christendom?”

In response Lebzeltern submitted that, possibly, Napoleon’s malevolent dispositions towards the Church might be beneficially affected by the removal of the ban of excommunication under which he still lay.

“But Napoleon would be excommunicated without any Bull of mine,” replied the other. “For he is, ipso facto, as a persecutor of the Church, outside her pale. Even if I had never issued any such ban against him, he would still be excommunicated by his own acts.”

Lebzeltern now proposed that the Holy Father should write a letter to Napoleon, demanding with all gentleness and moderation to be set at liberty and allowed to resume his apostolic functions. “I would even ask his help to that end,” pursued the Austrian, “and I would publish the letter. Such a letter would in no way disparage the Vicar of Christ, ever ready to forgive sinners; and, at the same time, it would place Napoleon in an exceedingly embarrassing situation before the world. By so doing, your Holiness would infallibly destroy at a single blow those weapons of calumny which he is employing against you, and which he means to go on employing.”

“Listen, Lebzeltern. You know that I am willing to concede all that it is possible to concede; but where my conscience is concerned, you behold me perfectly resigned to remain as I am, a prisoner. If my captivity were a thousand times harsher—if I had, even, to mount the scaffold—I should not deviate by so much as a hair’s breadth from what my duty demands of me. And it would be an unworthy betrayal of that duty if I were to remove the ban of excommunication from Napoleon without good and sufficient reason. As to the letter you propose that I should write to him—a kind of encyclical, as it were—frankly I feel that, in sending such a thing to a man like Napoleon, who is capable of changing the wording of it, and then of publishing it to my detriment and his own ends, I should do wrong in taking so grave a risk without first consulting the Sacred College.”

And, on Lebzeltern’s arguing that it was the Pope’s duty to make the first move towards a reconciliation with the Emperor, Pius VII was silent for a moment, as though deliberating upon his next words. At last he spoke again:

“If Napoleon shows a desire to become reconciled to the Church, and if he will prove his sincerity by some deed, the thing can be arranged—and I assure you that no one is more desirous of it than I.”

And with that the first interview came to an end. Lebzeltern did not see the Pontiff again until two days later; on May 18, he found him in a condition of great fatigue from overwork (as may easily be understood when one remembers that the entire business of the Church had fallen upon the shoulders of the venerable Pontiff, deprived by Napoleon’s orders of assistance of any kind in the transaction of that stupendous task!) and having before him a letter recently received from Cardinal Fesch. In this letter the Cardinal had written of the Emperor’s intention—unless an agreement were speedily come to between himself and the Holy Father—of settling the question by choosing Bishops that would do his will from among the French clergy, Bishops who would administer their dioceses in accordance with Napoleon’s instructions alone and without any reference to the Pope. In answer, the Holy Father had condescended to write back to the Cardinal to say that the Emperor was evidently bent upon making impossible any reconciliation between them; and that any Episcopal Council that the Emperor might call together upon his own initiative would be absolutely null and void. Nevertheless, he, the Pope, being unwilling to refuse any chance of reconciliation, the Cardinal was to exhort Napoleon upon the subject; to assure him of his glory in this world and in the next if he would but sincerely become reconciled to the Church; and, equally, to threaten him with condign punishment upon himself and his dynasty, if he should persist in his persecution of the Church.

Lebzeltern now had to recognise that the Sovereign Pontiff had, in his heart, lost all confidence in Napoleon’s good intentions; for Pius VII now spoke of yet further pains and penalties that he had not made use of and which were still at his disposal. Lebzeltern, though, undiscouraged, only tried the harder to incline the Pope towards an understanding with the Emperor.

“If Napoleon will do something in favour of the Church, then, and not before, will I withdraw my excommunication of him,” replied the Pontiff. “To gain absolution, one must do penance——”

“Surely, Holy Father—but, generally speaking, the absolution precedes the penance”—a specious argument, this, of the diplomatist, seeing that the fruit of the absolution is dependent upon the performance of the penance.

All preliminaries being exhausted, it only remained for Lebzeltern to disclose the absolutely last possible basis of an understanding between the Pope and the Emperor.

“If the Emperor were willing to forego any formal act of abdication of the Temporal Power on the part of your Holiness,” he ventured, “might he count in return upon your absolute silence as to the past?”—By which Lebzeltern meant that the Pope should by his silence give a tacit sanction to all the things that Napoleon had done to the Church and her ministers—his imprisonment of the Pope and many of the Cardinals, his sequestration of countless Church moneys, his closing of the multitudes of religious houses, and his throwing of their occupants, destitute and homeless, upon the world.

“Out of the question,” said the Pope. “I could never feel sure of any pact with Napoleon.” Presently, however, he added: “The guarantee, though, of a third party to any treaty I might make with him would certainly ease my mind considerably—especially if Austria would furnish the guarantee.” And then, in an access of reconciliation, he continued: “I have already told you what I would be disposed to do on my side towards healing the breach between Napoleon and the Church. What more does he want of me? Does he wish me to recognise him as Emperor of the West? Very well, I am willing to do so. Does he wish me to crown him as such at Rome? Very well, again I am quite ready to do so. For that would not in any way be contrary to my conscience, provided only that he makes his peace with the Church and ceases from persecuting her; but I insist upon it that he shall respect her earthly Head in that Head’s unchangeable capacity as the spiritual chief of Christendom!”

Lebzeltern was, indeed, astounded at the Pope’s generosity.

“Most Holy Father,” he stammered, “you have given too much not to give just one little thing more—merely to allow your subjects to obey the present Government in the Papal States, and to order them expressly to do so.”

There followed a gesture of such pain on the part of the Sovereign Pontiff, expressing so eloquently his repugnance to this proposal, that Lebzeltern was penetrated with a shaft of regret for having made it. Moreover, as he says himself, “I trembled at the thought of all I had obtained from him!”

At the same time, Lebzeltern felt convinced of the uselessness of the Pope’s concessions. He knew that Napoleon, unless he could obtain the one thing on which his heart was set—the actual sovereignty of the Papal States, and that with the Pope’s consent and blessing,—would not for a moment consider anything else that might be offered him instead.

So Lebzeltern parted from the Holy Father for that day, his heart full of indefinable misgivings for the dark future in which the power of Napoleon loomed so vast and menacing, and in which there was no great light visible to him of the Church, save only here and there, so to speak, where the feeble red glow of a few distant, wide-scattered sanctuary-lamps starred the mirk of the new Europe.

On May 20, Lebzeltern went for the last time to the Vescovado, to take leave of the august prisoner within its walls.

On this last occasion of their meeting at Savona, the diplomatist found Pius VII in a very strange frame of mind. Not by any means inclined to withdraw the concessions he had made in the previous interview with Lebzeltern, but only regretting them bitterly; hoping they might not satisfy Napoleon and so be rejected by him. On Lebzeltern’s presenting for his consideration a written outline of the concessions in question, the Pontiff, after considering them a little while, rose suddenly from his chair and spoke as follows:

Presently, among other things, he went on to speak of the private misgivings with which Napoleon’s character inspired him: “Between ourselves, Lebzeltern, I am convinced that Napoleon is not in good faith when he says that he wishes to become reconciled with me.... If only he would let me have some one here, at Savona, to help me in my work, which is really and truly overwhelming; moreover, there is a vast amount of specialist and technical business which I cannot possibly transact by myself without consulting my expert advisers. And, to make matters worse for me, my health and my eyesight are giving out; I do not feel that I shall be able to carry my burden of solitary labour very much longer; besides, it is bad for my temper, which I confess, frankly, I often have great difficulty in curbing.”

Nor is there anything wonderful in this when one remembers the Pope’s situation after being imprisoned nearly a year in the house of the Bishop of Savona, shut off from the Cardinals (of whom the only news he had was that they had been imprisoned and maltreated in French fortresses by order of Napoleon) and from the faithful. Alone with his doubts and difficulties and age and ill-health; and the insidious temptations put before him by the Emperor’s instruments (conscious, some of these, as was Fesch; unconscious, again, as was Lebzeltern)—what is there astonishing or blamable in this “great difficulty” so well and simply confessed by the most benignantly human Barnabo Chiaramonte?

Presently he spoke again, to utter a final warning to Napoleon:

And with that he dismissed Lebzeltern, who was as much moved as he; for they now shared the same conviction of the utter emptiness of Napoleon’s professions of a desire for reconciliation.

And, as it proved, the doors of Savona did not open for Pius VII until the next year, 1811—and then only to allow of his deportation to another prison at Fontainebleau, where he was to remain until Napoleon’s downfall. Once only did the Sovereign Pontiff weaken (with none but the purest of good intentions) when, in 1813, he consented, for a moment, to renounce the Temporal Power, in order that he might be allowed to go back to Rome, thence to direct the Church. But in vain, for Napoleon would not let him out of his hands, and Pius VII, perceiving the mistake he had made, announced to all whom it might concern his resumption of the inalienable dominions and Temporal Sovereignty of the Popes. And, in 1814, he returned to his rightful throne in the Vatican amid the rejoicings of his subjects.

But what must have been his reflections in regard to his oppressor during the five years (the exact duration of Napoleon’s crime against him) that were consumed in the terrific expiation of St. Helena? And his awe and amazement at the stupendous vindication of his trust in the providence of Heaven?—for, as the Italian saying has it, “God does not pay wages day by day, but only on Saturdays—and then He pays in full with interest!”

Pius VII’s own revenge on Napoleon took the form of offering safe and honoured homes, and the means to live, to his mother and his entire family after his downfall. Whereby many descendants of the Bonapartes are counted among the Roman nobles at this day.