I used to have among my possessions a number of old coloured drawings, the original designs for the decorations put up in Rome for the return of Pius VII. It was a triumph not decreed by politicians, but a spontaneous outburst of overwhelming joy. For five years the entire government of the Church had been suspended; not once had the Pontiff been allowed to make his voice heard in her affairs. There is something strangely sinister in that silence, during which no Bishops were appointed, and not a single line was added to the ecclesiastical archives. The fear and depression that weighed down Catholic hearts was indescribable, and the relief when the cloud lifted almost too overwhelming to be borne. The Papal States had suffered much during those years, and the Pope’s own city worst of all. Business was at a standstill, more than a third of the population had migrated elsewhere, preferring exile to the tyranny of the French rule. Those who remained were frightfully impoverished by heavy taxation and by the general paralysis of commerce which Napoleon’s wars and blockades had brought not only on Italy but on the whole of Europe. The populations turned out _en masse_ to meet their sovereign as he travelled home, and as he neared Rome many nobles who had retired to their estates came to accompany him on the last stages of his journey. Among these were Count Mastai-Ferretti and his son, Giovanni Maria, now eighteen years of age. The event made a profound impression on the young man. As a child he had wept and prayed for the Holy Father in his captivity; through the first years of his youth the thought of Pius VII, a helpless prisoner, had ever been present to his mind and many a fervent prayer had gone up for his sovereign’s and his country’s deliverance. Now it had come, and to him, not yet illuminated with knowledge of the future, as well as to all those around him, it seemed as if all trouble were passed away and the sun that shone so gloriously on that 24th of May, when the people took the horses from the Pope’s carriage and themselves dragged it through the rejoicing streets, were but an earnest of unbroken peace and happiness to come. Rome had seen many festivals, but none so spontaneously, madly joyful as this. From every window floated crimson and blue silk draperies rich with gold; the thousands of balconies were wreathed in flowers, and the vast procession moved along in a rain of roses and lilies and violets showered from above; music was everywhere, but it was drowned in the shouts and hosannas of the multitude that had gone out to meet the traveller with palms in their hands and now thronged the way before, beside, behind him. The women were weeping for joy and audibly thanking God for this great day; a hundred thousand persons knelt to receive his blessing, and many, many of them must have remembered how they knelt to receive it last, as the coach was whirled along the highway