"When shall I have done talking to you of all these trifles? When shall I busy myself only with finishing the Memoirs of my Life and my life also, as the last page of those Memoirs? I have great need of it; I am very weary, the weight of my days increases and makes itself felt on my head; I amuse myself by calling it 'rheumatism' but it is the kind that one cannot cure. One word only sustains me, when I again say: "'Soon.'" "3 _April._ "I forgot to tell you that, as Cardinal Fesch behaved very well in the Conclave and voted with our cardinals, I took a resolution and invited him to dinner. He refused in a very tactful note." [Sidenote: Dispatch to Portalis.] DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS "ROME, 2 _April_ 1829. "MONSIEUR LE COMTE, "Cardinal Albani has been appointed Secretary of State, as I had the honour to inform you in my first letter carried to Lyons by the mounted messenger dispatched on the evening of the 31st of March. The new minister is not pleasing to the Sardinian faction, nor to the majority of the Sacred College, nor even to Austria, because he is violent, an Anti-Jesuit, rude in his manner, and an Italian above everything. Rich and excessively avaricious, Cardinal Albani is mixed up in all sorts of enterprises and speculations. I went yesterday to pay him my first visit; the moment he saw me, he exclaimed: "'I am a pig!' He was, in fact, exceedingly dirty. 'You shall see that I am not an enemy.' "I am giving you his own words, monsieur le comte. I replied that I was very far from regarding him as an enemy. "'You people' he resumed, 'want water, not fire: don't I know your country? Haven't I lived in France?' He speaks French like a Frenchman. 'You will be satisfied, and your master too. How is the King? Good-morning. Let us go to St. Peter's!' "It was eight o'clock in the morning; I had already seen His Holiness, and all Rome was hastening to the ceremony of the Adoration. "Cardinal Albani is a man of intelligence, false by nature and frank by temperament; his violence foils his cunning; one can make use of him by flattering his pride and satisfying his avarice. "Pius VIII. is very learned, especially in matters of theology; he speaks French, but with less facility and grace than Leo XII. He is attacked on the right side with partial paralysis, and is subject to convulsive movements: the supreme power will cure him. He is to be crowned on Sunday next, Passion Sunday, the 5th of April.