"The daylight was failing; the shadows crept slowly across the frescoes of the chapel, and one distinguished but a few bold strokes of Michael Angelo's brush. The candles, extinguished one by one in turns, sent forth from their stifled flames a slender white smoke, a very natural image of life, which Scripture compares to a little smoke[71]. The cardinals were kneeling, the Pope prostrate before the same altar where a few days before I had seen his predecessor; the admirable prayer of penance and mercy, which succeeded the Lamentations of the prophet, rose at intervals in the silence of the night. One felt overwhelmed by the great mystery of a God dying that the sins of mankind might be wiped out. The Catholic Heiress was there on her seven hills with all her memories; but, instead of the powerful pontiffs, those cardinals who contended for precedence with monarchs, a poor old paralyzed Pope, without family or support, Princes of the Church, without splendour, announced the end of a power which has civilized the modern world. The master-pieces of the arts were disappearing with it, were fading away on the walls and ceilings of the Vatican, that half-abandoned palace. Inquisitive strangers, separated from the unity of the Church, assisted at the ceremony on their way and took the place of the community of the Faithful. The heart was seized with a two-fold sadness. Christian Rome, while commemorating the Agony of Jesus Christ, seemed to be celebrating her own, to be repeating for the new Jerusalem the words which Jeremias addressed to the old." [Sidenote: To Récamier and Portalis.] DISPATCH TO M. LE COMTE PORTALIS "ROME, 16 _April_ 1829. "MONSIEUR LE COMTE, "Things are developing here as I had the honour to foreshadow to you; the words and actions of the new Pope are in complete agreement with the pacificatory system followed by Leo XII.: Pius VIII. goes even further than his predecessor; he expresses himself with greater frankness on the Charter, of which he is not afraid to pronounce the word nor to advise the French to follow the spirit. The Nuncio, having again written about our business, has received a dry intimation to mind his own. All is being concluded for the Concordat with the Netherlands, and M. le Comte de Celles will complete his mission next month. "Cardinal Albani, finding himself in a difficult position, is obliged to pay for it: the protestations which he makes to me of his devotion to France annoy the Austrian Ambassador, who is unable to conceal his ill-humour. From the religious point of view we have nothing to fear from Cardinal Albani; himself troubled with very little religion, he will not feel the impulse to trouble us either with his own fanaticism or with the moderate opinions of his Sovereign.