Not so did Margaret find Rome in 1847. The intervening years had wrought a change. Within the defiant fortress of superstition a divine accident had happened. A man had been brought to the chair of St. Peter who felt his own human power too strongly to consent to the impotence of the traditional _non possumus_. To the timid questioning of Freedom from without he gave the bold answer of Freedom from within. The Papal crown had sometimes covered the brows of honest, heroic men. Such an one would he prove himself, and his first message was to that effect. Fortunate, fatal error! The thrones of the earth trembled at it. Crowned heads shook with the palsy of fear. The enslaved multitudes and their despised champions sent up a ringing shout to heaven, for the apocalyptic hour had come. The sixth seal was broken, and the cannon of St. Angelo, which saluted the crowning of the new Pontiff, really saluted the installation of the new era. Alas! many woes had to intervene before this new order could establish itself upon any permanent foundation. The Pope forsook his lofty ground. France, republican for a day only, became the ally of absolutism, and sent an army to subdue those who had believed the papal promise and her own. After a frightful interval of suffering and resistance, this was effected, and Pius was brought back, shorn of his splendors, a Jove whose thunderbolt had been stolen, a man without an idea. Then came the confusion of endless doubt and question. What had been the secret of the Pope's early liberalism? What that of his _volte-face_? Was it true, as was afterwards maintained, that he had been, from the first, a puppet, moved by forces quite outside his own understanding, and that the moving hands, not the puppet, had changed? Or had he gone to war with mighty Precedent, without counting the cost of the struggle, and so failed? Or had he undergone a poisoning which broke his spirit and touched his brain? These were the questions of that time, not ours to answer, brought to mind here only because they belong to the history of Margaret's years in Italy, years in which she learned to love that country as her own, and to regard it as the land of her spiritual belonging. CHAPTER XII. MARGARET'S FIRST DAYS IN ROME.--ANTIQUITIES.--VISITS TO STUDIOS AND GALLERIES.--HER OPINIONS CONCERNING THE OLD MASTERS.--HER SYMPATHY WITH THE PEOPLE.--POPE PIUS.--CELEBRATION OF THE BIRTHDAY OF ROME.--PERUGIA.--BOLOGNA.--RAVENNA.--VENICE.--A STATE BALL ON THE GRAND CANAL.--MILAN.--MANZONI.--THE ITALIAN LAKES.--PARMA.--SECOND VISIT TO FLORENCE.--GRAND FESTIVAL.