M. Cacault, not daring to disobey the orders he had received, prepared at once for his departure, but his excellent heart and his affection for Rome suggested to him a means of preventing the mischief that was sure to follow from the anger of Napoleon, if once kindled against the Holy See. He proposed that Cardinal Consalvi, the Pope's secretary of state, should at once set out for Paris, to lay before the First Consul the imperious reasons by which the Holy Father was forced to refuse the proffered concordat. The French agent felt confident that, whilst it would flatter Napoleon's pride to be able to exhibit to the Parisians a Cardinal prime minister in waiting upon his will, the presence of Consalvi would also be a proof of the Pope's anxious desire to come to a favourable understanding on the affairs of the French Church. After mature deliberation this plan was adopted. The Cardinal took care that to the credentials usually given in cases of treaties, the Pope should add a most precise command that his envoy was to consider the project of concordat which had been corrected at Rome, and hitherto rejected at Paris, not only as the basis of the future treaty, but as the concordat itself. Powers were granted, however, to make such changes as did not alter the substance of the document. "I thought it necessary", says the Cardinal, "to have my hands tied in this way, because I foresaw that, unless I were in a position to show the French government how limited were my powers, they would soon force my entrenchments".