Within a few days after the communication of this order, Pius VII. reached Bologna. Among the ecclesiastics who there hastened to offer homage to their restored sovereign, there were few who could approach his throne with a fuller consciousness of unsullied loyalty, or who could present more unequivocal evidences of the truth and sincerity of the allegiance which they tendered, than the ex-Professor Mezzofanti, driven from his chair because he refused to compromise his loyalty even by an indirect recognition of the Anti-Papal government, and only restored, when, after the concordat of 1801, the occupation of the Legations had been acquiesced in by the Pontificial government itself, he had a second time suffered the penalty of loyalty in a similar deprivation. It will easily be believed, therefore, that, in the more than gracious reception accorded to him by the Pontiff, a feeling of grateful recognition of his fidelity and of sympathy with the sacrifices which he had made, was mingled with undisguised admiration of his talents and acquirements. Hence the first impulse of this munificent pope was to attach to his own immediate service a scholar who was at once eminent for learning, distinguished by piety, by priestly zeal, and by loyalty in the hour of trial, unstained even by the slightest compromise. The re-construction of the various Roman tribunals and congregations which, during the captivity of the Pope and Cardinals, had been, for the most part, suspended, suggested an opportunity of employing, with marked advantage for the public service, the peculiar talents which seemed almost idly wasted in the obscurity of a provincial capital. The halls and public offices of Rome had been the school or the arena of all the celebrated linguists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and the very constitution of the congregation and college, “De Propaganda Fide,” appeared specially to invite the services of one so eminent in that department. Accordingly, Pius VII. surprised the modest Abate by an invitation to accompany him to Rome, and proposed for his acceptance the important office of the secretaryship of the Propaganda[358]—one of those so called _poste cardinalizie_, which constitute the first step in the career towards the cardinalate.