As regards the Pope, he has constantly changed in his official life and vacillated from one side to the other, and those about him say that in many, nay in most, things he follows capricious and momentary impulses. But Pius is inflexible and immutable where he fancies he is a divine instrument and has received a divine mission, and that is the case here. He is persuaded that he is ordained by the special favour of God to be the most glorious of all Popes. Among his predecessors there are three to whom he seems to me to have a great likeness. I should say that he had chosen them as models, if I could assume that he knew their history. But Pius has never occupied himself with the past; he is purely the child of his age, and lives only in the present. The three are Innocent X., Clement XI., and above all Paul IV. He has in common with the first his strong experimental belief in his own personal inspiration without any theological culture. He resembles the second in giving himself up to the theological guidance of the Jesuits, and in his highhanded treatment of such Bishops as dare to have an opinion of their own. And just as Paul IV. used to boast that hereafter men would be obliged to tell of the lofty plans conceived by an aged Italian who, as being near his death, might have rested and bewailed his sins,(56) so does Pius too desire in his old age to make great though peaceful conquests, and to establish the Papal sovereignty as a “rocher du bronze,” to borrow the phrase of another autocrat. With the help of the Council he hopes to render the universal dominion of the Papacy an impregnable fortress, by means of new walls, bastions and batteries, and to hand it down to his successors as an omnipresent and omnipotent power. He believes that the thoughts and desires of his soul are in reality the counsels of God made known to him by inspiration, and that if by following these counsels he accomplishes the deliverance of the Church and of mankind, it is the Hand of God which uses him as an instrument. And why should not Pius see a sign of his election to high and extraordinary destinies in the circumstance of his having already sat longer than any of his 256 predecessors, even Pius VI., on the apostolic throne? A history of his Pontificate has already been written in this sense by one of the Jesuits of the _Civiltà,_ and Pius has the chapters read to him one after the other. I am told that a chapter on the Council is already written. The French Court historiographer, Vertot, who had to describe a Belgian campaign including the siege of a fortress, wrote the history of the siege before it was finished, and said quietly, “Mon siège est fait.” And thus the Jesuit historian of the Pope can already say, “Mon Concile est fait.” And in one sense the Council is indeed finished since the 23d inst.—finished by the new order of business.