The embassy was to embark at Genoa, and it was there, while waiting for the final preparations to be made, that its members received the sad news of the death of Pius VII. This caused delay, and it was only after the election of Leo XII and his confirmation of Archbishop Muzi’s powers that the mission finally sailed from Genoa, on the 5th of October, 1823. Ninety years ago! The world has shrunk since then; the voyage that I made in 1885 in three weeks took Monsignor Muzi and his companions three months to accomplish. The “good barque _Eloïse_,” manned by “thirty experienced seamen,” had been chartered for the expedition, but one’s heart aches to think of what those three good ecclesiastics must have suffered in one way and another on board of her. Very few Italians of their class are good sailors and all the horrors of seasickness were certainly theirs, combined with the unsavoury and unwholesome food that was all people had to depend upon during sea-journeys before the discovery of steam and cold storage. Storm after storm broke over the little vessel; she was nearly wrecked off Teneriffe; one dreadful night, the 5th of November, she was waylaid by pirates, who overhauled her from stem to stern seeking for plunder, and only abandoned her—in furious disgust—when Father Mastai had shown them that there was not a single article of value on board. Then came a sad encounter with a Brazilian slave trader, packed with unfortunate negroes, a sight most grievous and terrible to the kind-hearted priests; and then, after two long months’ sailing, a fearful storm which lasted eight days, during which the _Eloïse_ was so beaten about that no one hoped to escape alive. It was all a searching dispensation for quiet, stay-at-home Italian gentlemen who had followed their pious way hitherto along the most familiar lines!