enthusiastic and pious Pope would have wished above all things. Clement accordingly, when the ambassadors presented themselves for the appointed audience, would hardly deign to look at the memorial; and when they spoke of _reprisals_, his whole frame trembled, and he exclaimed, in a broken voice—“The Vicar of Jesus Christ is treated like the lowest of mankind. True that he has neither armies nor cannon, and it is an easy matter to despoil him of all his possessions; but it is beyond the power of man to compel him to act against his conscience.”[357] The moment this answer was made known to the monarchs, the troops of the French king seized on Avignon, those of the King of Naples on Pontecorvo and Benevento, all possessions belonging to the Roman states. At such distressful news the poor Pope was overcome by grief, and perceiving that he was unable to offer any material resistance, resolved to endure patiently those injuries, but not to yield to threatening; and he remained firm in his determination, although the Romans loudly murmured against him, and menaced and offered insult to the Jesuit party as the sole cause of the public calamities. The Pope’s position became more and more desperate every day, and he did not know that he had a single friend left. To whom could he now turn for aid? Genoa, Modena, Venice, nay, all the Italian states, took part against him. Once more he directed his eyes towards Austria. He wrote to the Empress Maria Theresa, that she was his only consolation on earth; she would surely not permit that his old age should be oppressed by acts of violence.[358] But the empress answered him that the affair was one concerning not religion, but state policy, and that she could not interfere without injustice. Nor was this the greatest affliction reserved for the old pontiff. While Clement was so overwhelmed by grief, in the beginning of 1769 the ambassadors of France, Spain, and Naples presented themselves, one after the other, before him, and demanded the irrevocable suppression of the whole Order of the Jesuits. The Pope, on hearing the proposal, was stupified, and remained for some time speechless. When he had recovered some composure, he answered, in a broken and faltering voice, that he would soon make known his intentions, and called a consistory for the 3d of February. But on the evening preceding the day on which that consistory was to assemble, he was seized with a convulsion, in which he expired.[359] The Jesuits have extolled the virtues and the holiness of this Pope to the skies, and consider him as the best friend the order ever had; while the philosophers, in their speculations, have attributed to him the ultimate ruin of the Society, on account of his obstinate resistance to the demands of reform.