In less than an hour, Joseph returned from the Tuileries with sorrow depicted on his countenance. He announced that the First Consul, on hearing his report, had given himself up to a fit of extreme fury; in the violence of his passion he had torn in a hundred pieces the paper on which the Concordat was written; but finally, after a world of entreaties and arguments, he had consented with indescribable repugnance, to admit all the articles that had been agreed on, but with respect to the one article which had been left unsettled, he was inflexible. Joseph was commanded to tell the Cardinal that he, Bonaparte, absolutely insisted on that article just as it was couched in the Abbé Bernier's paper, and that only two courses were open to the Pope's minister, either to sign the Concordat with that article inserted as it stood, or to break off the negotiation altogether. It was the Consul's unalterable determination to announce at the banquet that very day either the signing of the Concordat, or the rupture between the parties. "It is easy to imagine the consternation into which we were thrown by this message. It still wanted three hours to five o'clock, the time fixed for the banquet at which we were all to assist. It is impossible to repeat all that was said by the brother of the First Consul, and by the other two, to urge me to yield to his will. The consequences of the rupture were of the most gloomy kind. They represented to me that I was about to make myself responsible for these evils, both to France and Europe, and to my own sovereign and Rome. They told me that at Rome I should be charged with untimely obstinacy, and that the blame of having provoked the results of my refusal would be laid at my door. I began to taste the bitterness of death. All that was terrible in the future they described to me rose up vividly before my mind. I shared at that moment (if I may venture so to speak) the anguish of the Man of Sorrows. But, by the help of Heaven, duty carried the day. I did not betray it. During the two hours of that struggle I persisted in my refusal, and the negotiation was broken off. "This was the end of that gloomy sitting which had lasted full twenty-four hours, from four o'clock of the preceding evening to four of that unhappy day, with much bodily suffering, as may be supposed, but with much more terrible mental anguish, which can be appreciated only by those who have experienced it. "I was condemned, and this I felt to be the most cruel inconvenience of my position, to appear within an hour at the splendid banquet of the day. It was my fate to bear in public the first shock of the violent passion which the news of the failure of the negotiations was sure to rouse in the breast of the First Consul. My two companions and I returned for a few minutes to our hotel, and after making some hasty preparations, we proceeded to the Tuileries.